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John Prine likely gave Paradise, Kentucky, its greatest fame.

And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away

Now Paradise has another claim to fame as @RealDonaldTrump weighed in challenging the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) comprehensive research, analysis, and planning made clear that shutting “Unit #3” (a coal-fired power plant) is in ratepayer interest.

Unit 3, which went online in 1970, has deteriorated with age and has had a relatively high rate of unplanned shutdowns.

Keeping it running would require expensive mechanical and environmental upgrades

As Michael Bloomberg accurately put it replying to Trump, “As any business leader knows, the top consideration at @TVAnews is cost. Phasing out that coal plant will save Kentuckians money (not to mention their air & water).”

To provide some context as to Unit #3, it is a 50-year old plant that directly employs 131 people. Every year, its economics are worsening as its inefficiency, repair challenges reducing availability, and changing electricity markets reduce demands for it to produce electrons. In 2017, its capacity factor (what share of the time it was producing electricity) was just 25.47%. And, that lowered demand for generating services occurred even as two other coal-facilities (Units #1 and #2) were fully retired in 2017.

Clearly, within the local economics, this plant has an impact — between those 131 direct jobs and indirect employment (truck drivers delivery coal, some coal miners, restaurants relying on the business). This local economic impact, the only substantive argument for keeping the plant open, is real and should be addressed. This is, however, a “positive” externality just like coal pollution hurting human health and damaging the climate is an externality not included in the financial equation. Smart policy should incorporate externalities. In the case of the ‘positive’ externality, smart policy would incorporate TVA’s sensible decision-making, in the best interest of ratepayers and the region’s economic viability, with investment to provide a just and healthy transition for Paradise as the coal-plant is closed due to basic ‘business leader’ economic decision-making. Regretfully, unlikel Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump has (and his GOP enablers have) never shown substantive (as opposed to false rhetorical interest) in securing the long-term economic and social interests of America’s coal-miners and coal communities as 21st century reality lowers the viability of their resource extraction economies.

As to Trump’s out-of-the-blue engagement to drive TVA decision-making away from that in the interest of its ratepayers and larger community,

Not surprising, Trump’s tweet led to 10,000s of engagements. Many mindless Cult Of Trump, of course, along with fantasy fossil foolish comments (like claiming the future is the fairy-tale “clean coal”). On the other hand, quite a few substantive comments making clear simple reality:

• With every passing day, coal is a less important part of the U.S. (and global) electricity system. In the United States, coal was over 50 percent of the grid a decade ago and 30 percent today. And, as coal-generated electrons evaporated from the grid, the lights keep on and the economy boomed. The average person simply didn’t see the difference, other than reduced electricity bills, from flipping the switch on with cleaner electrons.
• Unit #3 is inefficient, unreliable, and less competitive with every passing day. Its operating costs, per kilowatt hour, are above the price it can sell its electricity. E.g., it is losing money with every electron it produces. It is not a viable entity in a capitalist economy.

There is yet another twist in the equation. Trump has been been a (corrupt) elephant in the china shop, breaking norms while likely breaking laws left, right, and center. In this situation, in addition to bringing Presidential visibility to a relatively small decision-space being executed by a competent planning process, Trump is intervening in what should be a commercial decision-making and putting serious pressure on public servants to skew decision-making. That is norm breaking in action. On top of that, there is a viable question to ask whether this goes past breaking norms to breaking laws. Is this a(nother) situation of corrupt Trumpian “Pay-to-Play”.

The primary provider of coal to Unit #3? Robert Murray’s firm.

Murray was a major contributor to the Trump campaign. An ‘advisor’ who had unique access to and influence over the Trump transition teams into the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency. Acting (and likely soon to be confirmed as) EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeling was a Murray lobbyist. Murray was a six-figure contributor to the Trump Inauguration. Yes, that inauguration committee that is under investigation for whether there was ‘pay to play’ and which remains unclear as to where it put its nearly $100M in contributions. (How much of that money went into Trump’s pockets? How many dollars were payoffs to people around Trump? How many were …??) Did Trump’s “Unit #3 tweet” not just give more fame to Paradise, Kentucky, but also raise a new angle for legal investigation?

UPDATE

Corruption only goes so far as does Donald Trump’s influence. Despite Trump’s aggressive tweet, TVA went forward with decision to retired Unit #3.

This morning, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey are introducing Green New Deal resolution. This resolution lays down a clear set of markers and principles that, if (when) adopted as core to U.S. government policy for the decade(s) to come, will make the most significant statement about and most significant set of measures to address climate change risks while seizing the reality of ‘crisis’ to strengthen society for the present and tomorrow. 

From an Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s office site’s blog post on the Green New Deal from the 5th: [note: that link will not work as that page/blog post was deleted shortly after this piece was written/posted]

The Green New deal achieves this through a World War 2 scale mobilization that focuses the robust and creative economic engine of the United States on reversing climate change by fully rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, restoring our natural ecosystems, dramatically expanding renewable power generation, overhauling our entire transportation system, upgrading all our buildings, jumpstarting US clean manufacturing, transforming US agriculture, and putting our nation’s people to work doing what they do best: making the impossible possible.

Any large-scale transformation of society can create the risk of some people slipping through the cracks. That’s why the Green New Deal also calls for an upgrade to the basic economic securities enjoyed by all people in the US to ensure everybody benefits from the newly created wealth. It guarantees to everyone:

A job with family-sustaining wages, family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security

High-quality education, including higher education and trade schools

High-quality health care

Clean air and water

Healthy food

Safe, affordable, adequate housing

An economic environment free of monopolies

Economic security to all who are unable or unwilling to work

Before taking additional keystrokes, an important public service statement of appreciation:

• Thank you Sunrise Movement founders/activists who have leveraged the work of many others, for many years, and helped spark a dramatic shift in the public conversation.
• Thank you Representative Ocasio-Cortez for your
  • passion about climate issues and how critical the requirement is to act,
  • full comprehension of how choosing to Act On Climate is an investment that provides the potential for massive return (financial, social structure/equity/etc),
  • incredible skill in communicating difficult issues in understandable and compelling ways, and
  • leadership on pushing the Green New Deal forward in public and in the Halls of Congress.
• Thank you Senator Markey for your
  • long-term work and passion about developing better climate policy.; and,
  • leadership in spearheading this resolution.

Right now, the most important item about the Green New Deal resolution is that it exists. With climate-science denialist Donald Trump occupying the Oval Office, fossil fools in political appointment positions and controlling the Senate, this resolution will not pass and become law in the coming 23 months. It does, however, set a marker for developing legislation to have ready to have the desk of the next President come 21 January 2021. For those of us who have concerned about climate change for years (decades) and have seen the nation take one step forward to be followed by two (or more) steps back, this is an amazing moment to conceive.  While this GND resolution is introduced on the Hill,

• Candidates from local school boards to many of the Democratic Party Presidential Primary candidates are endorsing Green New Deal;
• Legislation and policy discussions of Green New Deal (variants) are being introduced in County and State political bodies; and,
• Public support for climate action — for a Green New Deal — is at stunning levels (over 80% Democratic identified people and over 50% Republican when polled on basic principles).

While there is incredible amount of discussion that can/will be had about the Green New Deal (from ‘is it aggressive enough’+ to tweaking policy nuances (that matter) to balancing the role of the private/public sectors to asking if it misses real opportunities* to ….), the core point of the moment is to:

• Thank those who have been driving the Green New Deal into public conversation and into the Halls of Congress; and,
• Call on political and ‘thought’ leaders, of all stripes and at all levels, to support a Green New Deal as a fundamental and core element of government policy and investment.

NOTEs/PS

* “Miss real opportunities”: The GND resolution gets into specific technologies and policies, in a few cases, such as calling for “high-speed trains”. While that merits discussion (for example, far more valuable/critical is electrifying rail and upping capacity (nation-wide) for mid-speed rail), the GND resolution doesn’t seem (on first read, on word search) to have a syllable about a powerful arena: the payoff for greening school infrastructure. Not only is that valuable and critical space, it also appears to meet essentially all the core principles of the GND and is a massively popular option across the entire nation.

+ Re ‘is it aggressive enough’, an example is an already emergent challenge is ‘KIITG’: keep it in the ground.  Already, this morning, Friends of the Earth criticized the Green New Deal resolution for not explicitly calling for an end to Fossil Fuels. That criticism comes within praise, however. 

The Green New Deal is a strong vision for the future, stuck in the politics of today. We enthusiastically endorse the many pieces of the resolution that call for systemic change. But by failing to expressly call for an end of the fossil fuel era, the resolution misses an opportunity to define the scope of the challenge.

We are encouraged by many pieces of the resolution, including the embrace of a federal jobs guarantee, the commitment to worker rights and collective bargaining and recognition that the Green New Deal must be developed from the ground up in collaboration with frontline communities. While incomplete, the resolution is a good first step toward a Green New Deal.

It’s up to the grassroots to keep pushing at every step of this fight for an expansive vision that ends our fossil fuel addiction and solves the climate crisis.

Erich Pica, Friends of the Earth president

– Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was on NPR earlier this morning.  The few minutes are truly worth listening to for an excellent example of her effective ability to communicate difficult issues and for her words about the Green New Deal.

# Seen (published) after posted this, Dave Roberts has an excellent initial look at the Resolution that merits reading to provide a framework for understanding what it does to shift the ‘climate’ legislation discussion (move The Overton Window) in a progressive manner/way. 

But take a step back and appreciate: the progressive movement has, in rather short order, thrust into mainstream US politics a program to address climate change that is wildly more ambitious than anything the Democratic Party was talking about even two years ago. One-hundred percent clean energy, investment in new jobs, and a just transition have gone from activist dreams to the core of the Democratic agenda in the blink of a political eye. There’s a long way to go, but the GND train has come farther, faster than anyone could have predicted.

While most discussions of climate change focus on modern history, discussing the change from pre-industrial CO2 levels of roughly 275 parts per million to today’s 410 (or so), humanity has been impacting the climate for millennia. Essentially since the emergence of agriculture, humans have been putting their thumb on the scales and influencing climate. While it is the industrial era and the ever-mounting burning of fossil fuels that have driven the greatest change, agriculture (such as methane emissions due to rice cultivation and forestry (think the forests that became the Royal Navy’s ships)) has had enough emissions to tip the scale toward warming.

Generally, we think of humanity’s impacts as warming the planet. There are, however, other ways in which human impact has actually contributed to cooling the planet. Well known is the mid-20th century cooling influence from all the particulates and pollution in the atmosphere that reflected solar radiation and acted to counter the warming contributes of increased greenhouse gases. (This, plus the studied impact from volcanoes, is behind much of the thinking behind geo-engineering concepts like ejecting sulphur in the atmosphere to counteract warming.)

Until reading a paper earlier today, this seemed to be the major example of humanity driving ‘cooling’ (rather than warming) globally.

In “Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492,” scientists put figures behind the impacts of the genocidal 16th century. When Columbus ‘sailed the oceans blue’, there were approximately 60 million people living in the Americas. A century later, the population was a tenth that. With 90% fewer people, less agriculture was required (and sustainable), fewer other elements of human civilization (cities, roads, …) were required and maintained.

The scientists’ analysis suggests that some 56 million hectares (or roughly 140 million acres or over 200,000 square miles (nearly the size of France (250,000 square miles))) of agricultural land was overrun by fast growing plants and forests. These soaked up massive amounts of carbon dioxide. The scientists assess that, over a century, this amounted to 7 to 10 ppm.

In this period, there was a climate event called the Little Ice Age that, in at least part, seems to have been driven by human action.

“There is a marked cooling around that time (1500s/1600s) which is called the Little Ice Age, and what’s interesting is that we can see natural processes giving a little bit of cooling, but actually to get the full cooling – double the natural processes – you have to have this genocide-generated drop in CO?” explained co-author Prof Mark Maslin.

Let us be clear, as Prof Maslin’s comment does state, that the “marked cooling” was not solely driven by human action: the genocide (and resultant natural process of trees reclaiming cleared land) might have been half the reason for the Little Ice Age cooling.

Prof. Ed Hawkins, Reading University, was not involved in the study. He commented: “Scientists understand that the so-called Little Ice Age was caused by several factors – a drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a series of large volcanic eruptions, changes in land use and a temporary decline in solar activity.

“This new study demonstrates that the drop in CO? is itself partly due the settlement of the Americas and resulting collapse of the indigenous population, allowing regrowth of natural vegetation. It demonstrates that human activities affected the climate well before the industrial revolution began.”

While a genocide is not the path for climate action, this study has interesting lessons for today:

• Human action can cool the planet just as it is warming it today.
• Reforestation — on sufficient scale — can have a climate-level impact.
• This climate impact can occur quickly — with the same sort of rapidity
• This massive reforestation (essentially a France of trees) reduced carbon emissions roughly equivalent to two years of today’s emissions.

Tree-planting (such as massively accelerating green walls) can (should be) part of humanity’s decision to act on climate, to mitigate future climate change. The ‘natural’ reforestration due to the 16th genocide in the Americas makes clear that it can have a meaningful impact. And, it provides a simple rule of thumb: we need to push humanity toward a carbon-neutral emissions economy as rapidly as possible while reforesting roughly six Frances to bring the carbon system below 350 ppm.

Notes:

1. The study is well-documented. The references are rich and are worth mining is this topic is of interest.
2. Professor Bill Ruddiman, Emeritus-UVA, is perhaps appropriately called the doyen of studying humanity’s impact on the climate in the pre-industrial period. Here is his Tyndall prize lecture laying out his hypothesis and 2013 state of the research. In 2010, he published Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate.
3. Other human ‘genocidal’ actions might have had climate impacts. For example, Genghis Khan is estimated to account for killing about 5% of the then world’s population with a resultant impact (through reforestation) of perhaps 700 million tons of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere (about 1/10th the impact in the Americas).

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) is supposedly designed to bring fracked natural gas to theoretical markets in Virginia and North Carolina. This environmentally devastating project (from cutting swaths through pristine forests to worsening climate pollution) is, at its core, designed to boost its owners profitability (Dominion Energy (48%), Duke Energy (47%), and Southern Company (5%)) on the backs of ratepayers. While the pipeline is theoretically a private concern, regulated subsidiaries of its owners have contracted for 96% of the pipeline’s projected capacity. Those contracts assure payments (assure outsized profits) even if the services aren’t ever required.  Ever hear the term ‘privatize profits, socialize risks’? The ACP is a poster child for the term and the changing situation (increased risks) are making this clearer with every passing day.

Just released by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and Oil Change International, the report The Vanishing Need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline makes a compelling case that should underpin regulatory decision-making that the ACP is simply not in ratepayer interests and is counter the interests of Virginia and its citizens — if it ever was.

Things have changed since the ACP was originally proposed and then approved.

• The project’s costs have skyrocketed by at least 30 percent — and could mount even higher.
• Electricity demand projections used by Dominion and Duke (D&D) electric utility subsidiaries (68% of total capacity) to justify the contracts are not standing up to reality: demand is flat and no serious analyst considers those D&D assertions about future (phantom) growth defensible.
  • In fact, neither do these utilities. Dominion Virginia Power now projects 2033 natural gas use at 2019 levels.
  • “For the first time ever, the Virginia State Corporation Commission rejected Dominion’s Integrated Resource Plan in 2018. Among other issues, the Commission noted its “considerable doubt regarding the accuracy and reasonableness of the Company’s load forecast.” The Commission cited the inaccuracy of Dominion’s forecasts in the recent past, as well as the fact that PJM – the regional transmission organization – forecasts load growth for Dominion’s region of only 0.9% per year, compared to Dominion’s forecast growth of 1.4% per year.”
  • “Dominion has consistently predicted growing electricity demand, while actual electricity demand has remained essentially flat since 2007.”

• Renewable energy (and storage) prices have plummeted (and continue to plummet), making it clearer that new natural gas electricity plants will have a hard time competing against clean energy options.
  • With the emergent potential that Virginia will start to develop and exploit the Commonwealth’s virtually unlimited offshore wind resources at prices below what new natural gas projects can provide.

“Recent analyses of the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) for a range of generation technologies shows utility-scale wind and solar already competitive with gas in many markets,” said Lorne Stockman, Senior Research Analyst at Oil Change International and co-author of the report. “As renewable technologies and storage continue to decline in price, it increases the risk that natural gas plants planned for construction in the late 2020s will never materialize.”

Any objective read of The Vanishing Need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline makes clear that, even putting aside its environmentally catastrophic implications, the case that this project is in Virginia utility ratepayer and Virginia citizens’ interest has withered away … if it ever even existed.

For 2020, the Democratic Party is rich in good to extremely good options for nomination to be the next President of the United States of America. From Kamala Harris to Cory Booker, from Jay Inslee to Elizabeth Warren, from … to …, there are literally have dozens of (potential) candidates who would be good person to vote for and not simply ABT (Anyone But Trump).

With candidates announcing seemingly every day, this is a call to pay very serious attention to Governor Jay Inslee during the primary season and beyond.  This is not an endorsement of Inslee (even as I have great respect for him and am taking seriously the potential of supporting him in the primary), but a call to take his core message seriously:

For far too long, far too many have consider “environment” a special-interest area, divorced from the rest of policy and that “climate” needs to wait its turn in the policy agenda rather than something truly critical that requires action (now) and is intertwined with virtually every other policy arena and where failure to act dooms progressive agendas (across the board) to failure.  And, as that ‘far too long’ has been going on, the challenges of and risks of climate change have simply worsened, making aggressive action even more imperative with each passing moment.  And, of course, the #CultOfTrump GOP regime is moving the nation the wrong way just when aggressive action is required and becoming ever more feasible.

Re feasible, there is good news within this dismal space.  Renewable energy is no longer just a cleaner option, requiring paying attention to ‘externalities’ for economic justification, but increasingly the cheaper power option even within structures built to favor polluting fossil-fuel incumbents. Plunging battery prices are enabling ever more transportation cases to be true in this way as well.  These, and many other trends, are making more people aware that ‘going green’ is the better economic case.

Perhaps the brightest star in the Democratic universe, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC — how many D politicians are getting branded/known just by initials?), has helped shine a spotlight on the urgency and payoff potential for climate action. While, in varying ways and names, the ideas of a Green New Deal have been around for awhile (decades?), she has brought a visibility a Green New Deal simply didn’t have prior to late 2018.  And, polling is making clear that there is massive public support (among Ds, Independents, and even Republicans) for the core ideas and principles of a Green New Deal.

The next POTUS must have climate action front and center, core to their entire concept of governance, and something that they will make a priority for action day in, day out through their Presidency.  

Real support for and engagement with the Green New Deal (even as details will be developed, fought over, … for the next some years) might be a reasonable surrogate for this. Many (potential) candidates have already expressed their support.

That list is growing. Gillibrand has endorsed the Green New Deal. Inslee, who is not in the tweet, has. And, …

However, simply signing up for the Green New Deal as some form of litmus test does not a climate hawk make.  What is the past record? Who do they listen to and surround themselves with? What policies are they truly promoting? What is the willingness to engage on the issue when stumping?

For many years, strong statements about climate action have generated (among) the largest applause lines from Democratic Party voters.  In 2019/2020, perhaps our candidates will actually hear and understand that being a Climate Hawk isn’t just necessary, isn’t just good policy, but is great politics as well.

In the selection of the next

President of the United States of America, we must take Jay Inslee(‘s message) very seriously: 

the next President must take climate change seriously

As to this Democratic primary voter,

only a Climate Hawk will earn my vote.

The turn-around of U.S. fossil fuel energy fortunes has been stunning over the past fifteen years. From a general (not universal, but general) understanding that the U.S. had passed peak natural gas and that the globe was facing eminent peak oil, the general (not universal, but general) perspective is that U.S. natural gas supplies are absurdly close to limitless and that oil production can increase significantly over a sustained period of time. Amid this seemingly rosy economic story, there have been analysts and industry specialists warning of risks of a financial bust: that there is a shell game of debt financing moving around with fracked natural gas simply not being a profitable endeavor with sustained low natural gas prices. While there might be great substance to these perspectives, the reality is that such a financial bust simply hasn’t been a real part of the U.S. oil and natural gas primary story line for the past few years.

The seemingly rosy oil and natural gas story might — or might not — be packaged around financial risk and a looming financial bust, but continued aggressive pursuit of it will generate a a far more consequential and far more certain bust.O

Oil Change International‘s just-released report Drilling for Disaster makes this headlong rush toward bust quite clear. With plans for additional oil and natural gas exploitation the equivalent of adding 1,000 new coal-fired power plants, they assess that the O&NG industry’s plans are “incompatible with climate limits.”  In other words, as CNN puts it, “America’s oil boom is terrible for the climate.”

All those who believe that the answer is “all of the above” must rethink their beliefs. While it might produce near-term financial rewards and produce some other benefits, the fundamental reality is that full-throated exploitation of America’s oil and natural gas will assure climate catastrophe. No matter the short-term benefit streams, this is an assured path toward a catastrophic bust.

Seeking to think through Green New Deal, the following seem to be the fundamental core principles and objectives. To create a plan (actually, an adopted actionable program) that will

• Reduce humanity’s risks from and impacts on climate change (in accord with climate science) and
• Strengthen society (improve economic performance, reduce economic and other disparities, address social injustices).

While there are many serious questions and debates (100% renewable or clean electricity? Carbon pricing (tax, cap and trade, otherwise)? How does other social policy legislation (free public university, universal health care, full employment) fit with the GND? Etc …) that merit embracing, there seems to be one clear arena for aggressive increased public investment that truly fulfills, strengthens, meets these core principles: Green Schools.

As I’ve often written about, Greening the School House is perhaps the only way to do all of the following with the same investment dollars:

• reduce
  • school costs (or free up resources for other uses, such as text books, salaries, …)
  • pollution (both local and global)
  • vulnerability to natural/man-made disasters
• improve
  • educational performance / outcomes
  • student, employee, community physical/mental health
  • local economic performance and future prospects

As put in the past, greening the school house

might be the only educational achievement enhancing path that is also “profitable” (due to energy and operational cost benefits) even without considering the secondary (job creation, student/teacher health) and tertiary (pollution levels, capacity building for energy efficiency and other ‘green’ across the country) benefits.

Want to make a step forward in achieving a Green New Deal, to reduce our climate impacts and risks while strengthening the society, then make sure to understand, promote, and execute serious efforts to Green Schools.

The video below provides a year’s worth of high and low temperature records globally. In 2018, across all these sites, there was about a two-to-one skewing of high vs cold temperature records. Writ large, over time, there should be a rough balance between these. With humanity’s thumb on the scales, with a warming climate, monitoring globally has been showing far more high temperature records being broken than cold ones (decade in, decade out, for the past forty years).

If the climate wasn’t changing in one direction, over time, writ large we should expect two things:

1. A rough balance, between highs and lows, with perhaps some ‘see-sawing’ with colder and warmer periods.
2. A (slow?) decline in total records as it should, with more years of data, become harder to set either record highs or lows.

Neither of those is the case.

PS: Another great visualization

Just as the military considers climate change a threat multiplier increasing risks and threats around the world, making its job(s) harder to accomplish with every passing year, so too businesses of all shapes and flavors should view climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ creating risks that require attention to maintain continued viability. News today about a major US corporation being driven into bankruptcy in no small part due to climate change’s “threat multiplier” effect hopefully will capture attention in boardrooms around the nation and world.

Pacific Gas and Electric, facing billions of dollars in claims over the deadly 2018 Camp Fire, is headed to bankruptcy court.

Just as with so many climate change-related impacts, such as flooding after storms, there is not a single point ‘climate change caused’ statement to be made. 

PG&E isn’t “facing billions of dollars in claims” due solely to climate change but due to the (almost certain) reality that — over years — PG&E underinvested in hardening its assets, maintaining its systems, and developing appropriately urgent response systems to deal with (seemingly) urgent maintenance/repair requirements which became greater liabilities and vulnerabilities with every passing year as climate (wildfire) risks and threats increased.  

In the past century, California has warmed about three degrees … with that warming accelerating in recent decades. Associated with that, the worst wildfire seasons and worst wildfires are overwhelmingly in recent years.

since the 1980s, the size and ferocity of the fires that sweep across the state have trended upward. Fifteen of the 20 largest fires in California history have occurred since 2000.

PG&E’s apparent(ly systematic) negligence combined with climate change to increase risks and led (almost certainly) to many deaths and much destruction. Climate change increased the threat while PG&E’s (seemingly systematic) negligence made California & Californians even more vulnerable to those risks.

In the face of a changing world, of even a changing business environment, businesses must take reasonable action for change or else suffer pain while likley causing pain for others.

In climate action terms, PG&E failed to “adapt” to mounting climate threats, failed to harden its systems (physical, policy, procedures, …) in the face of those threats. And those failures look to have (literally) killed people.

The Camp Fire alone killed at least 86, and may have been triggered by a spark from PG&E’s power lines.

• PG&E’s electrical equipment was blamed for sparking 17 of California’s major wildfires in 2017.

Today, one of the nation’s largest utilities is going into bankruptcy.  

Failure to deal adequately with climate change impacts is at the core of PG&E’s problems.

PG&E is not the first firm to fail in the face of climate challenges and risks. It will not be last. Aggressive moves to #ActOnClimate (both to mitigate (reduce emissions to reduce future risks) and adapt (take measures for greater resiliency to and preparedness for climate risks)) will, however, reduce the number of firms that join PG&E in the ranks of climate change victims.

A good share of the U.S. government is shut down over Trump’s faux emergency demand for taxpayer money to fund the wall that he promised his supporters, time and again, that Mexico would pay for.

Amid this manufactured crisis, which has easily over a million uncertain about their next paycheck (government employees and contractors, along with those who rely on those salaries (including, for example, food service providers who no longer have lunch customers)), some news came in to my desk top about walls to believe in, walls worthy of funding.

Just as The Great Wall can be seen from space, the PRC’s 21st version will likely be visible by the naked eye of space tourists in the coming years. China’s Great Green Wall “is planting a 4,500 kilometer area with 100 billion trees”. Planting trees to fight desertification is also a fast-acting tool to fight climate change.

A #wall to believe in. https://t.co/Myfx8cIObp

— A Siegel (@A_Siegel) December 17, 2018

Halfway around the world, Africa’s Great Green Wall targets an 8000km long “natural wonder of the world across the entire width of Africa” and “creates a barrier against climate change running across the Sahel region.” A decade in, it covers about 15% of that length with millions of planted trees and large swaths of improved land.

Rather than Trump’s steel picket monstrosity, a collaborative US-Mexican effort could combine large-scale renewable energy with agricultural projects to create a green swath along the border that would create jobs and prosperity for both nations.

Due to climate change and other impacts of human activity, human civilization (and natural ecosystems) is facing a Shrinking Planet: sea-level rise, desertification, and other impacts are literally reducing the land area available to support human civilization. Efforts like China’s and Africa’s Great Green Walls are paths to slow and even reverse that ‘shrinking’.

Amid the #TrumpShutdown, it is worth remembering and emphasizing that there are walls worth supporting, walls worth funding.