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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.

The ‘nuclear renaissance’ envisioned a decade ago has stalled to the point of near fantasy. While there are Chinese programs that keep open the promise of ‘traditional’ large nuclear power plant projects, constructing such plants does not seem viable in current economic and energy market conditions.

With (relatively) rapid changes in electricity markets (efficiency driving flattening of demand in developed nations even amid economic growth; extremely low natural gas prices; rapid growth in renewables with ever lowering prices), investing $15B or so for adding 1-2GW of capacity a decade or more into the future is an extremely uncertain proposition. A proposition worsened by seemingly ever-increasing price stickers for such power plants.

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) have been ‘on the horizon’ for a long time with the promise of addressing this uncertain proposition by offering a path for incremental additions into the power system, providing a path for incremental and potentially low-cost meeting of community power requirements.

Recent news suggests that the SMR promise might actually be on the path to becoming.

Nuscale has contracted BWXT for the detailed engineering designs for its 60MW SMR.

The system is targeted for meeting a Utah Power contracted requirement for 12 units (a 720MW facility) for operations to begin in 2026.

The target levelized cost of electricity (LCOE): $65/mWh.

That price — if it can be met — is significantly lower than that of any large-nuclear power plant being developed in the developed world (such as Vogtle and Hinckley).

At $65/mWh, if achieve, the Nuscale SMR would provide a credible alternative and/or partner with renewable energy systems. While pure mWh prices for renewable energy systems are plunging and now often well below $65 mWh, when storage and other investments required to provide assured power are included, the NuScale price will be quite competitive in many markets.

Now, the NuScale SMR

• Still is in design;
• Is only projected to be $65 mWh and that price might not survive the system’s encounter with reality; and,
• Will, in the best scenario, only start deploying in the second half of the next decade and likely can’t have a major impact in the power sector until well into the 2030s.

With all that in mind, the NuScale announcements about their SMR suggest the value of focusing on moving toward a “clean power” (electricity) system rather than being locked into a renewables only future. The priority is to have reliable, affordable (if not low price), extremely low carbon electricity. If nuclear power can safely meet a portion of that requirement, it should be embraced.

At least some more reporters and at least some polling organizations are looking out their windows, paying attention to wildfires in California and heat waves in Australia and floods in …, and starting to address climate change.

https://twitter.com/rebleber/status/1069985291140780032?s=11

These (so-to-speak) newcomers to the beat of the most critical issue facing mankind are approaching the topic almost as one might discuss the Easter Bunny and (more ominously) the Zombie Acopalyse.

Too often we see reports of (Republican) politicians and the public being asked:

“Do you believe in climate change?”

It's almost 2019. Can we stop reporting on climate change like it's Santa? https://t.co/J6FPCXlF7b

— Jennifer Hollett (@jenniferhollett) December 1, 2018

Simply, purely, this is not a situation of belief but a willingness to accept scientific conclusions and understanding.

A decade ago, climate scientist Dr. Vicky Pope explained it thusly:

When climate scientists like me explain to people what we do for a living we are increasingly asked whether we “believe in climate change”. Quite simply it is not a matter of belief. Our concerns about climate change arise from the scientific evidence that humanity’s activities are leading to changes in our climate. The scientific evidence is overwhelming.

“The scientific evidence is overwhelming …”

And, sadly, reporters and pollsters persist in “belief”-type questions and discussions.

The term "belief" is inappropriate. We don't "believe" re "gravity". This is about understanding/accepting science.

— A Siegel (@A_Siegel) November 29, 2018

Mother Jones‘ Rebecca Leber makes the absurdity of “belief” framing clear.

https://twitter.com/rebleber/status/1070019588539248641

Will any journalist or pollster be embarrassed that the best they could do, with their limited shot at asking question, was to ask whether the President or his supporters believe in Vampires?

Rather than being embarrassed, when facing a politician the question could be: what discrete and specific actions will you vote for and execute to address the mounting climate crisis which is laid out in scientific analysis and reporting?

For the public, perhaps it is better to ask

• Are you aware that over 97 percent of the relevant scientific experts have concluded that humanity is responsible for over 50 percent of recent global warming (and potentially all of it)?
• Would you support government policy, such as moving toward clean electricity systems, to address climate change?
• …

Recognizing the reality of climate change is not about religious belief and framing in in this way undermines the ability to have rational and meaningful p.ublic dialogue about what policies to pursue to deal with reality

While the pace is picking up, it is a simple truth that too few U.S. politicians speak to their constituents about climate change in meaningful ways. Thus, to start with, a mark of appreciation for politicians who do make the effort to speak to their constituents to educate them and seek to mobilize them to #ActOnClimate.

This post is sparked by a weekly column from Delegate Paul Krizek (VA-44), Virginia House of Delegates, entitled: The time to act on climate change is now. So, to paraphrase from others, Paul had me at the opening line. Yes: we must act on climate NOW!

Krizek wrote the OPED (again, one of his weekly local columns to communicate with his constituents) after the release of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) discuss the “dire threat posed to our very existence by climate change”, communicate actions he as taking as an elected official (recognizing that Republicans hold the majority in the Virginia HOD), and provide thoughts as to what his constituents could do about climate change.

First Krizek makes clear this is a problem of today,

We just saw the danger of areas facing droughts with the deadly fires in California. The warmer climate creates drier landscapes and thus a longer fire season. In fact, the fire season in western states is 84 days longer than it was in the 1970, according to the Economist. These droughts will ravage the farming community. If our warming continues at the same pace, the production of some crops could fall by 75 percent by the end of the century. Warming on our current trajectory could cost our economy approximately $500 billion a year by the end of the century in crop damage, lost labor and extreme weather damage. This rivals the damage of the last economic recession!

He then discusses policy level actions, like emphasizing renewable energy (including legislation he has introduced to ease the path to securing solar power in the Commonwealth). And, he then turns to personal actions such as recycling, reducing plastic use, and insulating the home.

He concludes the OPED

research indicates that if we commit now to make strong adjustments within the next ten years we have an opportunity to minimize the long term damage and possibly even work to reverse some of the effects. However, if we remain complacent and don’t act, our children and grandchildren will suffer tremendous consequences.

Paris is burning and the Wall Street Journal editorial page is gleeful in its misrepresentation of the Gilet Jaune (Yellow Vest) flames. Along with so many others in the fossil-foolish climate-science denial cabal, the WSJ editorial page is asserting that the flames are about rejecting efforts to address climate change. It is all about, for the WSJ, people rejecting carbon pricing on gasoline.

The Libertarian Niskanen Center‘s Jerry Taylor provided an excellent reality check on the WSJ.

Key points from Taylor’s tweets (below):

• French gasoline is nearly $US7/gallon
  • — e.g., roughly more than 2.5x US fuel prices.
• To raise US fuel prices to French levels would require roughly a $400/ton carbon tax —
  • over 10x the highest proposals on the table even from climate hawk Bernie Sanders.
• The additional, delayed, French fuel taxes are roughly the equivalent of 11-23 cents per gallon.*
  • E.g., less than 2% of existing fuel prices.

As Taylor concludes,

the right would appear to be saying that a 4 cent/gallon increase in gasoline taxes (which is all that was proposed in France) would similarly trigger bloody rights were they proposed in the U.S. This sounds more like an empty threat than a cool-eyed forecast.

The Gilet Jaune riots are serious and, as per the decision to delay the implementation of the gasoline tax, this is not principally about French government choices to act on climate change, it is not (as falsely asserted by Trump) a repudiation of the Paris Agreement.

There is discord in France, with many seeing Macron’s policies as unduly favoring the already powerful, the already rich and undermining basic French egalitarianism and promoting the sorts of policies that have led to ever worsening economic inequality and concentration of wealth and power amid an ever-smaller elite.  And, frustration that Macron is seemingly oblivious to the reality of challenges in rural France and stressed non-elite urban areas that mirror those elsewhere in the world due to globalization.

Good morning. The protests in France are more about a solid plurality of French people not having enough money to live on despite full-time work than they are about resisting climate action.

1/2

— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 4, 2018

Now, there are threads of truth in the WSJ even though, with that truth, the subtext is deception.

voters don’t believe that climate change justifies policies that would raise their cost of living and hurt the economy.

What the WSJ editorial board is doing here is continuing to promote the fundamental falsehood that it is environment versus the economy and, essentially, falsely asserting that one can’t #ActOnClimate while boosting economic performance.

First, sensible moves to both mitigate and adapt to climate change will boost economic performance, even without considering the highest order value of reducing future climate costs and risks. If one wishes to be quite generous to the WSJ editorial page (which, based on the history of climate science denialism isn’t really justified), perhaps the argument is that governments around the world need to address climate change with policy structures that will address both climate risks and economic inequalities. E.g., is the WSJ providing a backhanded endorsement of the Green New Deal?

Second, there is the long-term challenge that traditional ‘economic’ measures (e.g., GDP) are mistaken measures. Spending massive resources to clean up an oil spill boosts the GDP due to the spending. Building seawalls to deal with rising seas boosts the GDP since it is economic activity. Insurance companies paying off for those killed and property destroyed in Paradise, California, in climate-change related fire catastrophe boosts the GDP numbers. Seriously, why does anyone think that this is ‘good’? As Michael Liebreich appropriately summarized as the attacks on the National Climate Assessment seeking to analyze GDP impacts from unchecked climate chaos:

I dont give a damn whether climate change causes more impact on GDP than climate action. A world where we are spending trillions to move cities inland, where coral reefs are destroyed and nature disrupted might well have a healthy GDP. But so what! Forget GDP, think about wealth.

— Michael Liebreich (@MLiebreich) December 5, 2018

Note: Taylor has the delayed tax at 4 cents/gallon when the range is 3 or 6 cents per litre, so 11-23 cents per gallon.

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