January 7th, 2013 · Comments Off on New Yorkers & Californians have rights all Americans should have when it comes to solar power
The investment world is, well, truly a mess. To raise funds in the truly open market, companies have to have huge (HUGE) amounts of resources invested in lawyers, paperwork, and otherwise. This is important to reduce the chance for outright fraud (pyramid schemes) like in the 1000s of ‘make a million off this penny stock’ emails that populate my spam folder. In the interim, prior to that level of investment, businesses can raise funds from ‘accredited investors’ — essentially people with a net worth of at least $1 million — who should be able to afford a 100% loss in their investments. Those early investors, however, often can make 20, 30, 40+% per year on these early-stage investments. E.g., the rich have paths to get richer that simply aren’t available for the rest of society. And, honestly, these restrictions on investing can make it hard for decent businesses seeking triple bottom line results (good for people, good for planet, and with profits) to get money early at reasonable rates.
Today, a true triple bottom line company offers an opportunity that is available solely to accredited investors — that is, unless you live in California or New York. If you are a Californian or New Yorker, you can invest in solar electricity systems for as little as $25 a pop … Live in an apartment or a rented home or simply without the $10,000s required for a solar system on your roof, this is a path to become a solar power system owner as part of a larger community.
Nestled among the mountains of Salinas, California, this affordable housing complex is home to over 120 low-income seniors. Rehabilitated from an antiquated motel into elegant, energy-efficient and affordable apartments, this community was designed with sustainability in mind from the very beginning. Located close to public transit, this community is a vibrant and eco-friendly home for Salinas’s rising population of low-income seniors. This solar project is estimated to produce the carbon equivalent of recycling 27 tons of waste instead of sending it to the landfill.
This project is, according to Solar Mosaic, going to return 4.5% per year to investors over a 96 month period at a time when few bank (savings) accounts are returning more than 0.5% and the 10-year Treasury Bond is at 1.90%.
TO BE CLEAR — while if find the Solar Mosaic model exciting, love the concept of crowd-sourcing solar (and other renewable energy and energy efficiency) projects, and find the projects that I’ve glanced at appealing, I have NOT closely examined the projects and I and NOT giving financial advice here. Please make sure to take a real look at the prospectus for these projects, especially if you are thinking about investing what you consider to be a significant amount of money which you cannot afford to lose.
Comments Off on New Yorkers & Californians have rights all Americans should have when it comes to solar powerTags:Energy · solar
January 6th, 2013 · Comments Off on Sustainability and water in draft Tunisian constitution
The nation which sparked the Arab Spring is engaged in a national conversation as to what should be the basic legal rules and structure for the nation. As part of this, the draft Tunisian constitution (pdf) is being discussed in a series of meetings across the country and, in that draft form, has many articles and elements presented with alternative versions that make clear this draft is not the finished product. Noting that I am far from an expert in international constitutional law, glancing through this draft uncovers many intriguing elements.
Two clauses are of particular interest/relevance for the subject matter of this blog.
Article 33 asserts “sustainable development” and makes “protection of [the] environment” a “responsbility of the state, institutions, and people.”
Article 34 focuses on water, asserting that everyone has “the right to water” and making this a state responsibility to “protect water resources” and assure competent management of water resources and the fair distribution of water.
In part to put substance behind these, article 130 creates the “Authority of Sustainable Development and Rights of Future Generations”. This authority “shall have cognisance over the general policies of the state, at the economic, social and environmental levels, with a view to attaining sustainable development that can guarantee the rights of future generations.” The Authority will have the responsibility to review all draft laws and government development plans. As part of this, all of “the Authority’s opinions … shall be published” along with, if the Authority’s recommendations weren’t implemented, explanations as to why the Authority’s recommendations were not followed.
If these articles make it through to the actual constitution, Tunisia will join several other nations with such core constitutional protections for the envrionment.
In ecologically diverse Ecuador, which encompasses the Galapagos Islands as well as parts of the Amazon rainforest, rights for nature were added to its constitution in 2008. Just [in 20111], in Bolivia, eleven new rights for nature were added to the constitution, protecting it from pollution, massive development, and genetic alteration.
Every person has the right to a clean and healthy environment, which includes the right a) to have the environment protected for the benefit of present and future generations through legislative and other measures, particularly those contemplated in Article 69, and b) to have obligations relating to the environment fulfilled under Article 70.
While many countries (pdf) around the world have glowing words related to environmental protection in their Constitutions, oft-times these words are difficult to comport with reality. And, this is certainly true in sustainability arenas. The South African constitution, for example, provides a right
‘to have the environment protected… through reasonable legislative and other measures that secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development’
Recognizing that Constitutional measures do not necessarily, in all nations, align with actual policies, these elements of the Tunisian draft constitution do provide some hope for that nation’s future governmental policy when it comes to energy, climate, water, and other environmental issues.
More broadly, many nations could benefit from the inclusion of such words into their Constitutions and basic governance.
January 1st, 2013 · Comments Off on To Challenge & Imagine Life Differently: Two New Year’s Resolutions
C4 (Catastrophic Climate Chaos Cliff) threatens our future prospects and our ability to create a positive future reality for ourselves and descendents.
George Herbert Walker Bush lies at the core of a driving motivation in my life.
President Bush was facing a reelection battle against Bill Clinton, and so advisers persuaded him to attend the world environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro, possibly the most optiistic moment in recent history. Before he went, however, he told a press conference that “the American way of life is not up for negotiation.” If that’s true, if we can’t imagine living any differently, then all else is mere commentary.
One thing that unites the progressive blogosphere is the drive to imagine a different life, a different world, a better one, a better path forward … and we all, in our own ways, fight to achieve those visions.
Twenty years ago, the first President Bush stated that “the American Way of Life is not up for negotiation”, showing an inability to imagine catastrophe from non-negotiation and an inability to see something better. Without imagination to see a better future and the power to achieve it, we will not progress out of catastrophe to prosperous sustainability.
A New Year’s Resolution:
imagine that better path and fight to achieve it.
And, I imagine life differently and it energizes me to fight to Energize America.
The Center for American Progress’ Think Progress website is home for one of the strongest and most widely read climate science / clean energy blogs. Led by Joe Romm, Climate Progress forcefully enters into climate science discussions and provides excellent material about clean energy progress. For anyone (especially Americans) concerned about fostering the conditions for a prosperous and secure climate-friendly future, Think Progress Climate is on a must read list.
With that it mind, an end of year Think Progress post provided rather stunning reading — not due to its contents but due to what it didn’t contain. As the calendar year winds to a close and we look to a ‘fresh start’ into another year, ‘lists’ are on many minds and appear in many publications.
This morning, 31 December 2012, Think Progress provided 12 Progressive Resolutions for 2013. From better drug policy to immigration reform to enacting gun safety laws, many interesting (if not outright good) items in this list. Again, however, the telling thing is the absence of a critical set of issues.
Amid these 12, no (zero, nada, nilch) reference to climate change, the climate cliff, environment, clean energy, green jobs, energy efficiency, fossil fuel impacts on the political system, … Clearly, whoever put together this post doesn’t pay attention to Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
NOTE: Something like the following should have been in this post from the get-go …
“Considering that this is 31 December and most people are likely on a vacation, this “Think Progress” post is likely a list done by one staffer who should have signed it w/their name rather than asserting that this list represented the entire Think Progress team.”
NOTE: Considering that he truly does seem to ‘get it’ on climate change and clean energy, it seems reasonable to wonder what the Chair of the Center for American Progress John Podesta, might have as a list of “12 Progressive Resolutions”.
The “12 Resolutions” failure to have anything re climate / energy / environment is surprising because: it is far from just Romm and Podesta at the Center for American Progress who write/have written on and discuss(ed) these issues; energy & environment are among CAP‘s main arenas of work; CAP typically is one of the better US institutions at linking climate change / clean energy to other issues; and the Think Progress blog (and not just ThinkProgress Climate Progress) often has posts on climate / clean energy / environmental issues. The climate silence in the “12 Resolutions” merited comment because it is so at odds with the overall nature of CAP work and Think Progress publishing.
The Washington Post’s Tom Toles well deserved the Pulitzer Prize that he won 22 years ago. And, since then, Toles has regularly demonstrated why he should be in the running for another one year after year … as per yesterday.
As with so many other of his cartoons, Toles demonstrates the power of an excellent political cartoonist, combining imagery with a few choice words to send a message with great clarity about a complex issue. This cartoon is one of those where the message is truly multi-layered.
And, if we take this imagery to heart (drawing an imaginary line from those facing the Fiscal Cliff molehill to the edge of the climate fissure), Toles well captures how a myopic focus on the Fiscal Molehill is inhibiting discussion of and focus on climate issues.
Toles’ Climate Fissure is a menacing red (warming?) set of complex and, by implication, growing cracks that undermine the entire surface. This imagery underlines how serious Climate Disruption actually is and how it threatens essentially everything about modern human civilization, in ways both predictable and uncertain in nature and timing, as an earthquake can shatter and devastate a city.
“Just practicing” provides both hopeful message and devastating critique. Hopeful in the sense that this suggests the political system will move on to dealing with climate change issues with the additional experience and capability built on dealing with the Fiscal Cliff. It is also devastating since the U.S. political system has demonstrated ineptness both in creating the conditions/scenario of the Fiscal Cliff and in its inability to foster a decent path through it without creating unnecessary trauma and drama. Sadly, the ‘devastating’ seems a more appropriate take on the experience.
Contemplate the corner comment “Whose Fault?”, which is a wonderful capturing of the reality that the “Climate Cliff” has multi-layers of ‘fault’. We cannot (should not) point our fingers at one thing and say ‘that is it’, there is no ‘single cause’ just as there is no single magical Silver Bullet solution.
Perhaps two elements of the Fiscal Molehill might have merited a slightly different approach. First, perhaps the ‘molehill’ should have been in the other direction, since it is distracting attention away from far more serious, difficult, and menacing climate issues. Secondly, perhaps the figures should have been shown tumbling (tripping) over the Fiscal Molehill since that would be a far more accurate representation of what has been and is going on in terms of dealing with the end of year deadline for ‘fixing’ the fiscal cliff. And, having the molehill the other direction with the figures tripping over it would have added another valuable implication to the cartoon: dealing with the “Fiscal Cliff” almost certainly will not help in addressing climate challenges since critical climate science, environmental, and clean energy programs are going to suffer fiscally — whether there is some form of bipartisan agreement to ‘solve’ the Fiscal Cliff or whether Republican intransigence pushes the nation over it.
The fiscal cliff debacle primarily tells us that the recent election changed nothing for political leaders of either party. We’re stuck with the climate status quo and, unlike our various economic woes, that is a prescription for irreversible, civilization-destroying disaster:
A seemingly simple question heading to the end of 2012:
What were the most notable climate-related stories of the year?
A group led by Greg Laden, interested in climate science, put together a list of notable, often, most worrying, climate-related stories of the year, along with a few links that will allow you to explore the stories in more detail. While it started, perhaps innocently, as a quest for a ‘top ten’ list, the effort to fit within an arbitrary limit quickly fell by the wayside. Thus, we did not try to make this a “top ten” list, because it is rather silly to fit the news, or the science, or the stuff the Earth does in a given year into an arbitrary number of events. (What if we had 12 fingers, and “10” was equal to 6+6? Then there would always be 12 things, not 10, on everyone’s list. Makes no sense.) We ended up with 18 items, but note that some of these things are related to each other in a way that would allow us to lump them or split them in different ways. (See this post by Joe Romm for a more integrated approach to the year’s events. Also, see what Jeff Masters did here.) We only included one non-climate (but related) item to illustrate the larger number of social, cultural, and political things that happened this year. For instance, because of some of the things on this list, Americans are more likely than they were in previous years to accept the possibility that science has something to say about the Earth’s climate and the changes we have experienced or that may be in the future; journalists are starting to take a new look at their own misplaced “objective” stance as well. Also, more politicians are starting to run for office on a pro-science pro-environment platform than has been the case for quite some time.
A failing of this list is that although non-US based people contributed, and it is somewhat global in its scope, it is a bit American based. This is partly because a few of the big stories happened here this year, but also, because the underlying theme really is the realization that climate change is not something of the future, but rather, something of the present, and key lessons learned in that important area of study happened in the American West (fires) the South and Midwest (droughts, crop failures, closing of river ways) and Northeast (Sandy). But many of the items listed here were indeed global, such as extreme heat and extreme cold caused by meteorological changes linked to warming, and of course, drought is widespread.
This list is subject to change, because you are welcome to add suggestions for other stories or for links pertaining to those already listed. Also, the year is not over yet. Anything can happen in the next few days!
Note that even among this extensive list, while the most serious ‘challenge’ is the U.S.-centric nature of the list/discussion, here are two examples of serious ‘missing’ items:
1. Amid massive climate-chaos related issues in the United States (hint, see after the fold), the 2012 Presidential campaign operated under a cloud of ‘Climate Silence‘, with what could be described as a conspiracy between ‘The Village’ (the traditional media) and the political elite to downplay (actually, basically ignore) the mounting urgency of doing something to avoid hurtling over the Climate Cliff. And, as a corollary to this, Republican Party climate denial continues apace (with serious impact on U.S. government (at Federal, State, and Local levels) even as a growing share of the American public links extreme weather issues with climate disruption.
2. Trees, globally, seem to be suffering seriously from direct and indirect impacts from pollution. While people have noticed trees downed by Sandy, the Derecho, dying amid drought, there has been far too little notice of just how unhealthy a huge number of these trees were that made them susceptible to falling. See Wit’s End for a focus on this.
E.g., the long list that comes after the fold is far from a fully robust list of the notable 2012 climate events and issues.
We all know that C4 is one of the dangerous explosives created by mankind.
C4 is also one of the most explosively dangerous risks ever created by humanity:
C4 =
Catastrophic
Climate
Chaos
Cliff
For decades, climate scientists and those concerned about what scientific work is telling us have struggled with the right terms to describe what humanity is doing to the planetary climate system and to, in just a few words, capture the meaning in a way that provides insight into the complexity and risks associated with this. “Global Warming”, “Climate Change”, “Climate Disruption”, “Global Weirding”, “Global Change”, … the list can on and on.
In the shadow of “The VIllage” myopic attention to “The Fiscal Cliff”, we are increasingly hearing calls for attention to be paid to the real challenge, our Climate Cliff. Even that term, however, falls short of conveying how serious our situation really is …
Twenty minutes into the 2013 State of the Union Address, President Obama turns to look to Speaker Boehner.
After a long pause, begins to speak forcefully about the nation’s need to take climate change science seriously.
The President tells the American people that he has been meeting with scientists and energy experts for the past two months privately.
That these experts have made a forceful case that the climate situation is far more serious than he had realized.
The President explains that they have convinced him not just of the seriousness of the situation but that we still have the opportunity to turn this existential threat into opportunity.
The President speaks to this point, extemporaneously, for over ten minutes — this was not included in the prepared remarks.
This is the President speaking – not a speechwriter not the collective wisdom of political appointees from across the Administration, but President Obama who evokes his daughters, with tears, in his remarks about the need to protect our grandchildren, our children, and even ourselves.
Before the President is done speaking, the White House sends out a eleven executive orders (on such things as mandates for energy efficiency in all government rented buildings, to setting up a working group (with schedule) for developing an energy policy roadmap to a clean-energy (zero carbon emissions) future, to contracting rules to incorporate energy efficiency standards on all government contractors, to enforceable telecommuting rules to reduce ‘white collar’ days in the office across the Federal government to …) that build on Federal energy and climate-related progress during the first term invisible to most Americans. And, at the same time, the EPA releases multiple directives (such as energy standards for federal buildings and for mercury standards on coal facilities) that had been held up within the Office of Management and Budget.
The Republican response to the State of the Union is left flat-footed in the face of this wholesale shift in Obama’s approach.
And, the SOTU evening is not a single strike event.
Personnel announcements in the following days show a major revamping of the policy process, from within agencies up through the OMB, strengthening the roles and responsibilities of those advocating ‘fully burdened cost and benefit analysis’ when it comes to energy and environmental issues with reduced power for those who worked within traditional stove-piped analytical structures.
The President takes the case to the American people.
He sits, in the front row, in meetings where leading scientists discuss climate change issues.
He climbs on top of a Wal-Mart, with Wal-Mart’s executive team, to give a speech as to the value streams that derive from cool roofing, day-lighting, and other practices used in Wal-Mart stores to (quite profitably) drive down energy use. (Well, he also speaks about the need to treat workers fairly and to buy American there, even though the main subject is building energy efficiency.)
He visits the US Marine Corps’ ExFob, learning from Corporals how solar panels in the field made them more effective with an understanding how Energy Smart practices improve military capabilities.
Are you doing your part to create an Energy Smart America?
The Administration initiatives, themselves, add nearly ten percent to the expected reduction in carbon emissions by 2020.
And, in every state of the Union, accelerating a change seen with 2012’s extreme weather events, public opinion polling shows an increasing understanding of the linkages between human activities and climate change – overwhelmingly in Democratic and Independent respondents, but notably within Republican ranks.
Voices of Republicans, like former Representative Bob Inglis, who acknowledge climate change science and advocate for action to address contributing factors are becoming increasingly mainstream again. With almost each passing day, climate science is becoming ‘a given’ while the debate focus turns to ‘what are the best ways to address the issue’: tax policy, government investments, regulatory environment, etc …
The President’s leadership, combined with Executive Branch action and the changing tone/substance of the U.S. political debate, open the door to Chinese willingness to take more aggressive actions to reduce carbon emissions growth in their energy sector. The U.S.-PRC cooperation opens the door for serious climate talks by the end of 2013, as the world community moves from mouthing words about preventing a 2C increase in global temperatures to putting in place policies that viably could do this.
When the ball fell to signal the end of 2012, the situation looked bleak when it came to explosive C4: the risks of catastrophic climate change. A year later, as the countdown to 2014 finished, hope for a prosperous climate-friendly future dominated the discussion about the coming year.
Certainly the folks at Gazprom are having a good snicker, reveling in the mockery that has been made of what should have been a landmark Ukraine-Spain gas deal that would have loosened Russia’s gas grip on Kiev.
Everyone wondered how Russia would respond to Ukraine’s attempt at gas independence. But this is what happens when you mess with Gazprom.
It was a horrible moment for Ukraine last Monday—all the more horrible because the whole event was televised—when the historical $1.1 billion deal it was about to sign with Spain’s Gas Natural Fenosa turned out to be fake.
December 4th, 2012 · Comments Off on Climate Mitigation Advocates Systematically Understate Case — yet another example …
Systematically, for numerous issues, those advocating for action to mitigate our headlong rush over the Catastrophic Climate Chaos Cliff understate the case. The scientific community, notably the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), is ‘conservative’ — taking a very measured (scientific, one might say) approach with use solely of already published peer-reviewed literature which makes the IPCC reports dated by years the moment they’re released. Advocates for action on environmental issues often overestimate the costs of action in part because it so difficult to assess the dynamic nature of technological, policy, and cultural response to mandates to reduce pollution. And, supporters for action typically understate the benefits from action due to, in part, the difficult analysis to assess systems-of-systems benefits. There are very understandable (even defendable) reasons for this, but (even though we can find the examples that break this rule) remember a systemic truth:
Yesterday, Oil Change International provided an example of this fundamental truth with the (powerful) graphic to the right (full size table here). What a powerful set of images to get across the point that developed countries are subsidizing fossil fuels more than they are financing climate change action in the developing world. Wow. A powerful image that will leave an impression.
There is a problem. This significantly understates the extent of subsidization of fossil fuels for a very simple and very significant reason: externalities are not included in the equation. Increased cancer rates, polluted rivers, acid rain, greenhouse gas emissions, etc, are not included, they are ‘external’ to the graphic just as they are ‘externalities’ to the financial contracts to buy energy. That such costs are ‘externalities’ is one of the major reasons why we are failing to restructure our energy systems to a low-carbon future — advocates of action understate the case for action when they leave such externalities external to the discussion.
our future prospects and our ability to create a positive future reality for ourselves and descendents.
rather stunning reading — not due to its contents but due to what it didn’t contain. As the calendar year winds to a close and we look to a ‘fresh start’ into another year, ‘lists’ are on many minds and appear in many publications.
