The Most Effective Environmental Movement – Blog Post 17 - Oct 31

Through the evolution of my blogs and studies, it has become increasingly clear that in order for America to become more sustainable and environmentally-friendly, America needs a movement.  America needs a big change to happen to help save the environment that we have been rapidly degrading, and a large environmental movement is the only way that it is going to happen on a big enough scale to make an impact.  But what makes a movement successful?  How would members of this movement organize in the most effective way?
            This week I read three different articles in The Global Warming Reader, each with a different perspective on this question.  One of the articles, which was mentioned in a past blog post, is written by Bill McKibben and is titled “This is Fucked Up.”  In this article, McKibben insists that three steps need to be taken to help prevent climate change.  The first is that people need to begin talking about climate change itself, not the other more immediate issues around it like oil security.  McKibben argues that people need to realize that the planet is warming and that we need to stop it.  His second step is for people to fight for what we need and compromise later if need be.  The final step is to actually get in the streets and start a movement.  McKibben has many good steps here, especially with the second one.  In social movements in American history, people fought for their rights.  They did not compromise, except when they had to, and continued to fight until they got what they wanted.  Today’s environmentalists in Congress compromise relentlessly until the bill is only marginally helpful environmentally.  The third step is equally as strong because it emphasizes the fact that people need to get out into the streets and show their support.  This is needed to fight lobbyism; it is the only way that Congress will do something about this problem.

            McKibben’s first point is debatable.  Although it is imperative to educate people on the facts of climate change, not linking it to immediate interests of people will weaken the movement.  People need that emotional appeal to care enough to support a movement; otherwise, they will invest their limited free time elsewhere.  A purely environmentalist cause will not attract many dedicated supporters.  People need to understand that everything is connected to the environment and that we rely on it.  The immediate interests of people, such as employment and community involvement, are the things that will bring people together under one cause.  It is what will make a movement strong, and it will make people passionate. 

            The link between green jobs, community, and climate change has been made in some areas, such as in Los Angeles.  As discussed in “The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems,” the Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) works in Los Angeles to increase the energy efficiency of buildings.  These projects do not only help the environment but also provide clean, well-paying maintenance and construction jobs while improving the community.  The group integrates all of these components into one group, which is making such an impact on Los Angeles that the city has decided to retrofit about one-hundred buildings owned by the city.  This type of movement obviously is impacting Los Angeles greatly, in a very positive way, but as McKibben as mentioned in his second two steps, the movement now needs to be increased and continue to push for and demand what it needs to help save the environment.  In other words, this trend needs to get bigger.

            The final author, Mike Tidwell, describes the need for an environmental movement today, but does not do a very good job in doing so.  Although he calls for people to start a big movement, he strongly discourages the green consumerism that many Americans have adopted.  Tidwell says that green consumerism is really a waste of time and that it is counterproductive to the goal of saving the environment.  Although it is true that a bigger movement is needed and that people could be spending their time better, I think green consumerism is a good start.  Green consumerism is a cultural change where people may actually begin caring about the impacts that they have on the environment.  The more they care and the more this culture spreads, the easier it may be to upscale this movement and push for what we need.  In addition, a green culture could lead to more of a community feel around environmental science.  Finally, the green consumerism that Tidwell says can wait could teach a person the skills needed to start doing helpful jobs in a neighboring community, such as retrofitting a building.  He is right in the fact that people need to get out and begin a movement, and he is right to point out that green consumerism will not solve the problem.  On the other hand, I think that it is a good start to lead to a group like SCOPE forming in a community, which is why I think green consumerism should not be denounced. 

Acquiring The Most Reliable Information – Blog Post 16 - Oct 28

This week I read two parts of The Global Warming Reader.  Both of these readings were pulled from climate change deniers, and more importantly, from people who tried to spread the denial to other people.  The first article was a speech written by James M. Inhofe to the United States Senate.  This speech used science and scientists to show that there is no scientific consensus on climate change and that if the climate did warm up, it would be good for humans.  The second article was from the book State of Fear, in which Michael Crichton tells a story of environmentalists lying about climate change for publicity and money.  Both of these excerpts are very convincing.  Inhofe uses scientific “facts” to support his claims, which sound convincing even to me at first because experiments were done to support the other side of the debate.  Crichton uses a more emotional, story-like approach, which may not convince people that environmentalists are distrustful to start but may get them thinking that way subconsciously. 

            Acquiring good information is an incredibly important life skill.  How a person acquires their information and what they choose to believe dictates how they live their lives.  People say that college is all about learning how to learn.  Learning some things can be very straightforward because there is no controversy or debate on what it is or how it may be done.  But when a person is confronted with two sources with completely different claims, how does one determine which is correct and form an opinion on the subject? 

            This is an incredibly important question for environmentalists in general to answer because many environmental topics are controversial, deal with society and their views, and are made more confusing by industrial campaigns.  This confusion can lead to people not supporting an environmental cause, or even being avidly against it. 

            I think overall, people do not have time in America to read into depth on different subjects.  Most Americans probably believe some form of the media, and are especially influenced the first time that they hear about a topic.  The media is rich with industrial propaganda and research.  As this book has discussed, climate change skeptics many times get as much news time as the people claiming that it is real.  This results in confusion.  Ross Gelbspan’s article “The Battle for Control of Reality” brings up a few great points on this subject.  The first is that industry-funded research does not need to be peer-reviewed the same way federal government research needs to be, which makes it less reliable.  Only peer-reviewed research should be considered seriously, for obvious reasons.  Additionally, people should look at who funds the research to get an idea of if it could be swayed as a result of the funder.  These two things can help people to get through a large amount of information and find out what is the closest thing to the facts.

            As I brought up before, even if people knew that these checks should be done before believing a study, people do not have time for all of that.  It takes good research to find out who funded a certain paper or if a journal is peer-reviewed or not.  So what can an environmentalist do to help make this job easier for the average citizen?  Again, the options are top-down or bottom-up.  Top-down regulation could involve only allowing journals to call themselves scientific journals if they are peer-reviewed or to not let non-peer-reviewed scientific journals advertise their results in the media.  The other, more realistic option would be to spread knowledge to the general population on how to choose reliable sources.  More than anything, explaining what peer-reviewed science means and making sure that the words “peer-reviewed” shows up in the media during debates on subjects like climate change may help the most.  This would take all of the guessing out of it and make it easy for people to believe in environmental causes like climate change. 

China: Economy on the Incline, Environment on the Decline – Blog Post 15 - Oct 24

I read the article “Is Your Stomach Too Full?” by Mark Hertsgaard this week and found it eye-opening.  It began by discussing the incredibly poor economic state of China qualitatively, which made the poverty seem more real.  Hertsgaard discussed the lack of shoes in the winter, the ice on the inside walls of homes, the lack of sanitation, and the respiratory problems of the Chinese that have led to a culture of excessive spitting.  All of these descriptions really made it clear that the Chinese do not care much about climate change or the environment.  They care about getting out of poverty, being warm, having some comfort, and having a job.  This makes logical sense.  As shown in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, basic survival is the most basic need so this needs to be filled before other things are considered important. 

            The article continues on to discuss the electricity and power generation of the Chinese.  In China, electricity is predicted to increase at least seven percent per year, which would require a double in electrical generating capacity every decade.  That would require thirty to sixty new power plants every year, about seventy-five percent of them burning coal.  In addition, the Chinese are not putting many environmental features on their new power plants because of the additional costs.  It is very simple.  A company can build more plants if each plant costs less money to build.  As a result, with the exception of electrostatic precipitators, most plants built do not have scrubbers on them and do not wash the coal. 

            On the bright side, in the 1980s China reduced their energy intensity by focusing on increasing energy efficiency.  They realized that the energy production may not be able to keep up with the rapidly growing economy.  Although China is not likely to cut consumption just for the environment, they may be tempted to increase energy efficiency to save money.  This may be a way to help green the Chinese economy, especially because some studies have shown that replacing the old, inefficient Chinese technologies with new efficient ones could cut China’s energy consumption by forty to fifty percent.  That is a huge decrease, which could help to offset the increase in electricity and other forms of energy usage as the population rises and becomes more modernized.

            Although energy efficiency seems like the easy solution here, it is not.  As the article points out, the Chinese would prefer a power plant that costs $1000 per kilowatt that has 30-45% efficiency compared to a $1400 per kilowatt power plant that has 45% efficiency and removes 90% of the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.  Energy efficient technologies cost more, and China does not have the time or money to waste when it is trying to expand the number of power plants so that people can be warm. 

            So what could be a possible solution to fixing China’s environmental problems?  China’s environmental problems are not only theirs; they are also the rest of the world’s problems.  China’s development could put the world over the tipping point in regards to climate change.  Is it ethically sound to tell them to stop burning so much coal?  Can the world force them to put scrubbers on their coal power plants or buy more energy efficient technologies?

            I would say that we cannot force these changes on China.  Forcing China to stop burning so much coal or forcing them to put scrubbers or other environmentally-friendly technologies on plants may be taking heat away from the poorest Chinese during the winter, which I do not think is ethically right.  It is not another country’s place to make that decision.  We cannot force China to change its ways. 

            America can do two things in this situation.  The first is that America can try to fix itself before trying to put the blame on developing countries and before trying to restrict what they can do.  The developed countries used fossil fuels to become developed, so they should be trying to clean up themselves before scolding others.  Second, America can give information, advice, and support to developing countries to help them develop sustainably.  We cannot force China to stop using coal or to start using energy efficient products.  We probably cannot even convince them that energy efficient technologies are worth it in the long-term because they care about the short-term right now (much like companies in the United States).  Any technological solution that the United States gives to China probably needs to be at the same price or cheaper than Chinese technologies.  If the technology is efficient enough to payback its extra cost fast enough, the Chinese may consider it. 

For the good of the environment, the United States should consider transferring some environmentally-friendly technologies over to China, just as Japan is with scrubbing technology.  They can do this by providing information about environmentally-friendly technologies or by selling them the environmentally-friendly technologies.  If the developed countries really want to tackle climate change, then they could provide the Chinese with some subsidies to help lower the cost of energy efficient technologies down to the cost of the older technologies, which would make the decision easy for the Chinese.  This subsidy would probably never pass the American legislature, but maybe a non-profit or another country will step up to help bring clean technologies to China and other developing countries in the future by helping to pay for the extra cost.  

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>.