Get Energy Smart! NOW!

Each spring, millions of Americans at 1,000s of High Schools and Universities sit through commencement speeches. While many are filled with overused cliches and serve only as a speed bump en route post graduation parties, others represent mind-changing moments that “are truly worth remembering, or so well-said that they stick in the memory longer than just about anything else” with language worth returning to time and time again. Paul Hawkens’ is such a speech, framing our environmental challenges in a way direct relevant to the life choices of the students who were sitting before him.

You are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

Politicians are standard on the commencement rounds, typically providing pablum rather than substance. Sometimes, a politician takes a commencement speech to make a statement of fundamental importance, to move past photo opportunity to political leadership. Such is the case with Governor Deval Patrick’s 9 May speech at the University of Massachusetts (extracts after the fold).

Patrick opened with his perspective that education is about something greater than securing a job and that the graduates would put something central to their desires for the future: “above all I hope you will choose to be good citizens.”

your education here at UMass is about more than preparation for being good employees. It is about preparation for citizenship itself.

Good citizens take an interest in people and issues outside themselves. They understand community, in the sense of seeing their stake in their neighbors’ dreams and struggles as well as their own. They inform themselves about what’s happening in their community. They volunteer. They listen. They take the long view. They vote.

Good citizens don’t just live and work in a community. They build community.

With that in mind, Patrick laid out what is the greatest challenge today for being able to “build community”:

no policy choice before this community, this Commonwealth and this Nation is more emblematic than climate change.

After discussing climate science (highlighting the just released National Climate Assessment, 2014) and laying out Massachusetts’ progress in energy efficiency, clean energy, and climate mitigation/adaptation, Patrick laid out what we need from energy policy:

the time has come to set a new standard that ensures that, at every point in time, at every moment, we are getting the cleanest energy possible. It means energy efficiency first. It means zero-emission electricity next – solar, wind, and hydro. It means lower-emission electricity last – natural gas, an imperfect choice but best of the fossil fuels. And it means high-emissions sources never.

We should not be gleefully pursuing and celebrating an “All-of-the-Above” energy policy, which fosters continued investment in dirty energy sources along with moves toward clean energy, but must prioritize throughout our economy and our policy moves toward a cleaner energy system.

This is what we call a “clean energy standard,” and we should set one for our state that puts us on a path to reduce our emissions by fully 80 percent by mid-century. It’s not the ideal today, but it will get us there tomorrow. It’s how we move from good to better to best.

Patrick is laying out that ‘prioritizing’ clean over dirty isn’t perfection, isn’t “best”, but provides a path toward “best”.

What’s the best?

The best is a future free of fossil fuels.

A question:

Has a governor ever before made such a direct call for entirely getting off fossil fuels?

In a sentence, what is that “best …future”:

It’s an economy driven by homegrown, independent sources of renewable energy, cutting edge technology, and hyper-efficient cars and buildings.

This provides a positive and optimistic vision — that we can address climate change with leveraging our capacity for innovation with clean energy and efficiency throughout the economy.

Even better,

It’s a future within our grasp.

While every day makes the climate crisis worse,

We don’t have to wait for disaster:

the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stone,

but because humankind imagined a better way and then reached for it.

It is time to “imagine a better way” and create that “best future free of fossil fuel”.

Note:

Please take a look at and support the Better Future Project.

Here is their discussion of Better Future Project’s engagement with Governor Patrick and his speech.

UPDATE: Governor Patrick’s speech courtesy of Michelle Williams, MassLive.

Climate Related Portion of Governor Patrick’s Univ of Massachusetts, Amherst, 9 May 2014 speech

Surely no policy choice before this community, this Commonwealth and this Nation is more emblematic than climate change. For we cannot continue to consume so much of the world’s energy and take so little responsibility for the impact of that consumption on the lives of others, and the life of the planet itself.

Only this week, the Obama administration released a report, co-authored by over 300 independent scientists, which catalogued the evidence of climate change and its impact. The assessment demonstrates that climate change is an issue right now, not just for future generations. The impacts are being felt in all corners of the country and in a range of manifestations, including heat waves, coastal flooding, intense precipitation, and more extreme storms. And those weather changes have implications for our economy, transportation, energy, water, agriculture, ecosystems and oceans.

Most of these conclusions are not new. We are already seeing more severe weather extremes in our Commonwealth and our region, more hurricanes and wildfires, more coastal damage and blizzards.

Starting seven years ago, with that future in mind, we in Massachusetts took a fresh look at our energy reality. We knew that if we harnessed Massachusetts-grown energy sources, reduced our energy consumption and protected our natural resources, we could strengthen both the environment and our economy.

I am proud of the progress we have made and the example we have set for the Nation:

In 2007, we had just over 3 megawatts of solar capacity; today we have nearly 500 megawatts installed, and will more than triple that by 2020.

In 2007, we had just over 3 megawatts of wind capacity; today, we have installed 103 megawatts of land-based wind and are poised to become home to the Nation’s first offshore wind farm.

We’ve tripled the energy we’re saving from efficiency initiatives and today lead the Nation in energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Working with other states through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, we have lowered carbon emissions throughout the region and demonstrated that a market based cap-and-trade approach works.

Between 2000 and 2012, the electricity generated from coal in New England dropped from 18% to 3%; electricity generated from oil is down from 22% to less than 1%. We have reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 16% below 1990 levels already, and are well on our way to our goal of reducing emissions by fully 25% by the year 2020.

And our economy is not just unharmed but stronger. While the US economy was at a standstill in the first quarter of 2014, Massachusetts grew at a healthy 2.6% rate; and, in the last quarter of 2013, Massachusetts grew 69% faster than the nation. Indeed, with over 5,500 clean energy firms and nearly 80,000 clean energy workers, Massachusetts now has one of the strongest clean energy job markets in the nation.

But we can do more.

In January, I announced a plan to coordinate climate preparedness. By January 2015, we will have a plan to make our transportation systems, energy facilities and coastal communities more resilient.

Three of the so-called “filthy five” coal burning power plants in Massachusetts have been retired in the last few years. Two remain: Brayton Point in the South Coast region and Mt. Tom, just down the road. Within the next four years, both should shut down and Massachusetts should finally end all reliance on conventional coal generation.

As we migrate to cleaner natural gas, we should be mindful of the hazards of pipeline leaks to our immediate safety and also to the environment. A bill pending in the Legislature today would compel utilities to repair that infrastructure. We should pass it. And we should compel that same care around leaks of both methane at the source of extraction.

Our solar and wind generation has increased by great multiples in the last several years. We must redouble our efforts to get our electricity from clean power sources like wind, solar and hydropower, including by changing the laws that effectively limit the production, affordability and use by homeowners and businesses of clean alternative sources, and passing the hydro/wind bill now pending in the Legislature.

We have to migrate from the dependence on fossil fuels in transportation to the use of electric cars, buses and trains. Not only are these cleaner than gas- and diesel-powered vehicles today, but they will also get even cleaner as the means by which we generate that electricity gets cleaner.

And we should double down on energy efficiency. Massachusetts leads the Nation in energy efficiency. And yet here in a state filled with old homes and other buildings I meet people all the time – including many ardent environmental advocates – who have not even bothered to get the free energy audit from their local utility company. Changing out the light bulbs or adding some insulation, at the expense of your utility company, is a simple way for us to have a huge aggregate impact on reducing greenhouse gases and reversing the effects of climate change.

In fact, the time has come to set a new standard that ensures that, at every point in time, at every moment, we are getting the cleanest energy possible. It means energy efficiency first. It means zero-emission electricity next – solar, wind, and hydro. It means lower-emission electricity last – natural gas, an imperfect choice but best of the fossil fuels. And it means high-emissions sources never.

This is what we call a “clean energy standard,” and we should set one for our state that puts us on a path to reduce our emissions by fully 80 percent by mid-century. It’s not the ideal today, but it will get us there tomorrow. It’s how we move from good to better to best.

What’s the best? The best is a future free of fossil fuels. It’s an economy driven by homegrown, independent sources of renewable energy, cutting edge technology, and hyper-efficient cars and buildings. It’s a future within our grasp. We don’t have to wait for disaster: the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stone, but because humankind imagined a better way and then reached for it.

Our clean energy future won’t happen overnight, because it can’t. But it will happen, because it must. And it will be up to you.

Which brings me back to citizenship. Good citizens would no more carelessly compromise the air and water we share with one another and future generations, than we would heave a bag of trash over the fence into our neighbor’s yard.

NOTE / PHOTO Credit: The photo is from a 2013 commencement speech at Springfield Technical College as a photo from Friday’s speech was not available at time of writing this post.  Better Future Project image.