environment Politics: divestiture economics sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 9, Day 20: Rinse And Repeat
The Somerville Journal (MA, next town over from me) argues for divestment:
There is currently a global movement to get cities, universities, and other institutions to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Madison, Providence, and our neighbors in Cambridge have already agreed to do so. I and others in Somerville believe that our city should be at the forefront of this movement.
We have known for quite some time now that we cannot keep releasing carbon dioxide into the air indefinitely without terrible consequences for the ecosystem and the sustainability of our way of life. This point has recently been underlined by an analysis from the Carbon Tracker Initiative (carbontracker.org) showing that we can only burn around 20 percent of currently known fossil fuel deposits and keep climate change within internationally accepted limits.
And yet, despite this knowledge, fossil fuel companies continue to try to increase extraction, extract from currently untapped deposits, and find new deposits. This is their business model, this is their reason to exist, and their profitability depends on extracting the fossil fuel deposits they own and have rights to. They will continue to use their enormous wealth and power to make sure this happens.
I revised yesterday’s letter and sent it along. September 13:
When William Lloyd Garrison began agitating to end the great societal evil of slavery, the Civil War was decades away, and much of the public couldn’t have cared less about the issue. “There have always been slaves; without them our economy would collapse.” But the dedication of Massachusetts’ voice of conscience helped build a movement that transformed our society and hastened the end of a humanitarian crime.
Today we are beginning to recognize our collective servitude to the giant multinational corporations which sell us fossil fuels, sources of energy which we now realize are compromising our planet’s health and the lives of our posterity, most of the public still couldn’t care less. “We have always burned fossil fuels; without them our economy would collapse.”
The campaign for Massachusetts to divest from fossil fuels is the economic and moral inheritor of the fight against slavery, a hundred and fifty years ago.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: divestiture economics heroes justice slavery sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 9, Day 19: Just The Word I Was Looking For!
I sure am proud to be from Massachusetts. The Boston Globe:
Some Massachusetts lawmakers want the state to join a growing national movement that is fighting climate change by pressuring institutional investors such as pension funds and university endowments to divest holdings in companies that produce, distribute, and support fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels include oil, natural gas, and coal, which, when burned, produce carbon dioxide, the major culprit in climate change. Earlier this week, the Legislature held its first hearing on a bill that would require the state pension fund to unload over five years some $1.4 billion in investments — about 2.6 percent of the $54.4 billion fund — in oil companies, mining companies, refiners, and similar corporations. An estimated 200 people rallied in support of the bill in front of the State House Tuesday.
If the legislation is approved, Massachusetts would become the first state in the nation to divest its fossil fuel holdings, said state Senator Benjamin B. Downing, a Pittsfield Democrat sponsoring the bill. He argued that divestment makes economic sense given the quickening adoption of wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources.
“At some point, those fossil fuel companies will not be a good investment, and that will have an impact on our pension fund,” Downing said. “We need to transition away.”
This sprang naturally to mind. September 12:
It was in 1831 that Massachusetts’ voice of conscience, William Lloyd Garrison, excoriated public indifference to the evils of slavery, writing, “The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.” His dedication, and that of countless other abolitionists motivated by a profound sense of justice, helped hasten the end of a crime against humanity.
We now confront another kind of bondage — a servitude to the giant multinational corporations which profit hugely by selling us oil and coal to heat our homes, run our automobiles, and power our infrastructure — but which we now know are damaging our planet’s health in ways which will make our descendants’ lives all but intolerable. The movement to divest from fossil fuels is morally and economically analogous to Garrison’s tenacious campaign against another “peculiar institution” one and a half centuries ago.
Warren Senders
atheism environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility economics sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 8, Day 27: What It Don’t Get, I Can’t Use
Delaware Online notes their state’s response to POTUS’ initiatives:
Delaware officials gathered in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach on Wednesday as part of a nationwide chain of rallies supporting the Obama administration’s new climate change initiatives, producing both calls for action and ominous warnings.
“We need to think through the various tradeoffs, the economics, but the only way we can do that is to keep it at the top of the agenda,” Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Secretary Collin P. O’Mara said. “The only way we can keep it at the top of the agenda is if all of you and all of us keep bringing it up over and over again.”
O’Mara’s comment came at the end of a small group meeting at Wilmington’s Riverfront, supported by a coalition of business, labor, government, health and environmental groups backing Obama’s proposal last month to curb power plant emissions of carbon dioxide. That proposal immediately came under fire from skeptics and conservative politicians, with a Senate committee releasing a report earlier this month questioning the science behind Obama’s initiative.
Supporters have focused on a need for action to deal with growing evidence that human-caused pollution and fossil-fuel burning has set the stage for disastrous global warming and climate shifts before the century ends.
Threats range from sea-level rise and more intense storms, to flooding, extreme weather, longer and more-intense droughts, and changing agricultural and water supply conditions that Defense Department officials warn could increase global suffering and political instability.
I don’t remember specifically conflating economic and theological fairy tales before. I like it. Aug. 1:
Lawmakers, business leaders, and media figures are all fond of telling us that the imperatives of addressing climate change must be balanced with the requirements of economic expansion. Unlike the anti-science screeds of conservative climate-change denialists, this stance seems entirely plausible at first glance. And indeed, public statements of allegiance to the doctrine of continuous economic growth are as essential to a politician as professions of religious faith.
Perhaps it’s time to reconsider this shibboleth. After all, those photographs of Earth from space have been part of our consciousness for four decades. We live on a finite planet; our resources, whether they’re water, food, or the capacity of the environment to absorb our waste products, are likewise limited — and it is logically absurd to assert that infinite growth is possible under these circumstances.
As the saying goes, “Health is our greatest wealth,” and the health of our planetary home is ultimately the only “economy” that matters; a massive quarterly return isn’t going to keep our grandchildren from suffering the consequences of our civilization’s profligate and wasteful fossil-fuel binge. That can only happen through a concerted effort to address the causes and consequences of climate change.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: analogies capitalism corporate irresponsibility economics Keystone XL Tar Sands
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 8, Day 19: Boys, This Car’s Hotter’n a Two-Dollar Pistol.
The Winnipeg Free Press writes about the debacle at Cold Lake:
CALGARY – The Alberta Energy Regulator has ordered Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. to restrict the amount of steam it pumps into two oilsands projects following four spills earlier this year.
The move comes three weeks after the AER reported an emulsion of oilsands bitumen and water had been released into an unnamed water body on the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range in eastern Alberta.
The watchdog says Canadian Natural (TSX:CNQ) must restrict steam injection, enhance monitoring and speed up clean up efforts at its Primrose and Wolf Lake projects, which use a method called high-pressure cyclic steam stimulation to extract the bitumen.
“Although there have been no risks to public safety, until we investigate these incidents, better understand the cause of these releases, and what steps CNRL will to take to prevent them, we are taking these measures as a precaution,” said AER CEO Jim Ellis.
The AER ordered the suspension of steaming operations within the eastern part of Primrose earlier this year following three bitumen emulsion releases.
In late June, Canadian Natural reported a fourth release, prompting the AER to order CNRL to take further measures, including suspending steaming within one kilometre of the leak and restrict steaming throughout the northern and southern parts of Primrose.
High pressure cyclic steam stimulation — sometimes described as a “huff and puff” method of extraction — involves injecting steam into a reservoir through a well, letting it soak for a while and then drawing the softened bitumen to the surface through the same well.
It differs from steam-assisted gravity drainage, or SAGD, which uses two wells — one to inject the steam, and one right below it to flow the bitumen to the surface. The reservoir is also fractured using cyclic steam, whereas in SAGD it is not.
More on the addiction analogy. July 27:
Industrial civilization grew up on a diet of coal and oil, the liquid fossils of Earthly life from an unimaginably distant past. Like the “crack babies” of urban legend, our consumer culture was born addicted to these carbon-based fuels, and like any other addicts, we employ extraordinary creativity and resourcefulness to maintain the supplies of our chosen drug.
The destruction wrought in Eastern Alberta is a vivid example of the kind of unintentional sociopathy that is all too characteristic of addicts. Just as the junkie who burgled your apartment didn’t want to violate your privacy, nobody wanted a beautiful lake and a vibrant ecosystem to be destroyed — but in both cases, the demands of the habit took precedence over any- and everything.
Cold lake is a small and beautiful ecosystem now endangered by a single disastrous engineering decision. And what of Earth – a medium-sized planet in an unimportant galaxy — and its denizens? We too are endangered by societal choices made in the thrall of a crippling addiction.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility divestment economics
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 8, Day 11: Don’t Do As I Say, Do As I Want. Is That Clear?
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel discusses some of the opposition to divestment from our side of the ideological divide:
Not everyone supports the strategy. A local religious leader who’s been battling Exxon Mobil Corp. for years over climate change says he considers divestment the wrong move.
“This approach to this issue is too simplistic in my mind. It generates a lot of enthusiasm among young idealists, but it’s not a good strategy,” said the Rev. Michael Crosby of Milwaukee, a representative of the Capuchin order and board member of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility.
Crosby prefers direct engagement. He traveled to Texas to urge shareholders of Exxon Mobil to adopt a climate change resolution.
The Capuchins’ work of direct engagement with Exxon Mobil has gone on for more than a decade — and during that time the corporation agreed to stop funding groups that were denying the existence of global warming, Crosby said.
Resistance remains. At this year’s shareholder meeting, Exxon Mobil Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson said the company agrees that climate change is a serious issue. However, the ability to forecast the severity of what’s to come is limited.
“How do you want to deal with something where the outcome is unknowable but the risks are significant?” Tillerson said. “We do not have a readily available replacement for the energy that provides the means of living that the world has today.
“What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers in the process of those efforts when you don’t know exactly what your impacts are going to be?” he said.
This was pretty complicated to get down to 150 words. July 21:
When Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson asks, “what good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?” his definition of “humanity” pays more heed to the sociopathic corporate “persons” which he represents than to those of us made of old-fashioned flesh and blood. In this context, the notion that divesting from fossil fuel corporations is somehow futile because “the stock would be bought up by somebody else” is an obvious evasion of the moral and ethical foundations of good citizenship.
While Michael Crosby and his Interfaith allies may be using their investments as a point of leverage to confront corporate polluters over their contributions to planetary climate change, that strategy isn’t an option for most of us. It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing, and ending financial collaboration with the multi-national polluters who are fueling the climate crisis is both ethically and environmentally appropriate.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: economics idiots Republican obstructionism
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 8, Day 8: You Know What Your Problem Is? Your Problem Is That You’re Full Of Sh*t.
The LA Times notes that some Democrats are moving a little bit on climate, with predictable results from the wingnut caucus:
…some GOP members of the panel outlined what they said was a White House conspiracy designed to mislead the public on the threat of climate change. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) declared that Obama “believes that government can make better decisions than the people, and regulating carbon dioxide will give him all he needs to make nearly every decision for the American people.”
Liberals on the panel responded with fiery comments of their own. “To deny the fact that the overwhelming majority of scientists who have published peer review articles believe not only is global warming real, but it is man-made, and to continue discussion of ‘we are not sure, let’s look at something else’, is almost beyond intellectual comprehension,” said Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.).
Experts from the think tanks Climate Central and Climate Solutions then testified about the devastating effects they said global warming is having on the environment, and the need for immediate action.
An executive from the Reinsurance Assn. of America spoke of how the insurance industry is alarmed by what its modeling shows is an increasing frequency of extreme weather events caused by global warming.
Representatives from the conservative Manhattan Institute and the Institute for Energy Research gave opposing testimony, warning the action sought by Democrats in Congress will hurt the economy and have limited effect on the climate.
All-too-believable, alas. July 19:
The prating of self-styled deficit hawks is an utterly predictable element of any attempt at meaningful policies to tackle the climate crisis. It’ll “damage the economy,” or “kill jobs” — a particularly rich accusation coming from legislators who’ve recoiled from job-creation bills like vampires from a cross.
But the point is that intensifying climate change will damage agriculture, creating food shortages. As insect vectors move northward, invasive tropical diseases will become more common. Wildfires and extreme weather are going to clobber communities all over America and the world. In other words, more people are going to die as we approach what biologists coyly call an “evolutionary bottleneck.” Forget “killing jobs.” Failure to address climate change is going to kill people.
If the preservation of a habitable Earth is somehow bad for the economy, that’s a strong argument for changing our economy — not for shirking our responsibilities to our posterity.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: economics sustainability
by Warren
2 comments
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 7, Day 29: It Was Easier When Poor People Didn’t Exist
Popular Science notes that economic status has an impact on how people are affected by climate change:
Feel the heat? Sure you do, but not everyone in the U.S. suffers equally. During many heat waves, more non-white Americans die than white Americans. That surely has to do with the links between race and poverty—and thus not having air conditioning—in the U.S., but one team of public health researchers had another idea.
What if some people in the U.S. live in areas that are hotter than the neighbors just across town? The researchers, all from the University of California, Berkeley, decided they wanted to check if access to trees and other green cover, which keeps neighborhoods cool, is correlated with race. Having more trees and less asphalt in an area keeps reduces air conditioning bills and air pollution.
The researchers found that non-white Americans are more likely to live in census blocks that have little tree cover and more asphalt than white Americans. Blacks were the most likely to live in so-called “heat islands” in cities and suburbs, followed by Asians, then Hispanics, then whites.
This means that in the future, if global warming brings on more heat waves, non-whites could be more vulnerable than their white neighbors. To fix this, cities could plan tree-planting initiatives, the Berkeley researchers wrote in a paper they published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Many major cities, including New York and Chicago, already have new-tree plans in place.
But we knew that already. July 11:
Climate change’s disproportionate impact on economically disenfranchised Americans duplicates in microcosm what is happening throughout the world. Greenhouse emissions produced by privileged societies are endangering the world’s poorest nations; subsistence farmers in Bangladesh are losing their land, their hopes, and their lives to steadily rising ocean levels, despite having carbon footprints that are miniscule in comparison with those of industrialized nations.
In the planetary short-term, it’s “as we sow, so shall they reap.” The fallout of our profligate burning of fossil fuels is going to affect agriculture and infrastructure everywhere: droughts, extreme weather, and increased numbers of invasive parasites and diseases are going to mean shrinking harvests. Which, not to put too fine a point on it, means that more people will go hungry and more people will starve.
This blow to Earth’s poorest people is an unintended consequence of the industrialized world’s wealth and power. It is time for those of us in fortunate circumstances to work relentlessly to head off a catastrophe with profound environmental and humanitarian dimensions.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: Barack Obama corporate irresponsibility divestiture economics
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 7, Day 27: Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down
The NYT discusses divestiture in the context of the POTUS’ speech:
It was a single word tucked into a presidential speech. It went by so fast that most Americans probably never heard it, much less took the time to wonder what it meant.
But to certain young ears, the word had the shock value of a rifle shot. The reference occurred late in President Obama’s climate speech at Georgetown University two weeks ago, in the middle of this peroration:
“Convince those in power to reduce our carbon pollution. Push your own communities to adopt smarter practices. Invest. Divest. Remind folks there’s no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth.”
That injunction to “divest” was, pretty clearly, a signal to the thousands of college students who have been manning the barricades for nearly a year now, urging their colleges to rid their endowments of stock in fossil-fuel companies as a way of forcing climate change higher on the national political agenda.
“The president of the United States knows we exist, and he likes what we’re doing,” Marissa Solomon of the University of Michigan wrote soon after. Other students recounted leaping to their feet or nearly falling off their chairs when the president uttered the word.
Good stuff. I recycled an older letter, which takes exactly as much time as writing a new one. July 9:
Recent studies have demonstrated that college endowments won’t be adversely affected by divesting from fossil fuel companies, but this shouldn’t be the ultimate arbiter in any case. Economic rationales are ultimately secondary to the moral argument which recognizes that big oil and coal corporations rely on a profoundly destructive business model, atmospherizing huge quantities of fossilized carbon every year without regard for the consequences to our climate, our environment, or our posterity.
Higher education’s mission is expected to go beyond mere careerism to inculcate a responsibility to ensure a better future for all. While fossil fuels may be astonishingly profitable, colleges and universities investing in them are voting with their dollars for a future of devastating climate change instead.
Student campaigns for divestiture are environmentally, morally, and economically sensible. As in the long campaign against apartheid, it is the voices of youth which express the better angels of human nature.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Barack Obama denialists economics idiots Republican obstructionism sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 7, Day 22: Never Mud-Wrestle With A Pig
The San Antonio Express-News shares news about the looming fight in the Big Sky State:
Obama’s plan to fight climate change announced last week would include executive action to place limits on carbon pollution from new and existing power plants, while expanding development of renewable energy.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the president’s energy policy will still embrace traditional energy sources such as coal and oil.
Republican leaders in Montana are unconvinced. They predicted dire consequences for the state, calling the plan a war on energy and a job killer.
“This is a war on Montana energy, Montana families and small businesses and Montana jobs, and I will remain steadfast in the fight to stop the President’s job-killing agenda,” U.S. Rep. Steve Daines said in a statement.
Another Republican, Attorney General Tim Fox, warned the plan will blow a hole in the state’s budget.
“In attempting to rule by decree and legislate by regulation, President Obama has failed to take a balanced approach to energy policy and has failed to recognize the diverse interests and economies of 50 states,” Fox said.
The guy’s an idiot and a jerk. And a Republican…but I repeat myself. July 4:
Perhaps President Obama’s climate-change initiatives do indeed fail, in the words of Montana Attorney General Tim Fox, “to recognize the diverse interests and economies of 50 states.” But there is an important corollary to this criticism: by making legislative action impossible, the climate-change denialists in Congress have failed to act in the common interest of the USA.
Before “In God We Trust” was added to our currency in 1954, we had “E Pluribus Unum” — “Out of Many, One.” This historical motto of the United States calls on us to recognize that while the work of government must maintain a balance between the needs of individuals and those of the nation, our patriotic loyalty must ultimately be to the greater good. Such sentiments are absent in today’s GOP; these cynical anti-science zealots owe allegiance exclusively to their corporate paymasters, and not to the long-term well-being of our nation. Not to mention Earth.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: analogies Barack Obama corporate irresponsibility denialists economics idiots
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 7, Day 18: Tied To A Whippin’ Post
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel opines on the POTUS’ speech:
President Barack Obama’s speech last week on climate change was a welcome call to action on one of the great challenges of our time. If the science is right — and there is no reason to believe that it isn’t — climate change is here and could have severe consequences for human health, the environment and the economy. Meeting the challenge will be difficult and costly but also affords opportunities, especially for job growth in green industries.
As the president said Tuesday, “the question is not whether we need to act.”
The problem is that similar calls to action have been issued for decades and not much has been done to curb the belching of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Utilities such as We Energies, car manufacturers and some governments have taken important steps to reduce air pollution from a number of sources and have worked to reduce carbon emissions. They deserve credit for that.
But reductions of carbon dioxide significant enough to have an impact on climate change have remained elusive.
If Obama wants to change that pattern, his administration needs to follow through. The trick will be to do so without harming economic growth. New rules also need to be based on available cost-effective technologies that can actually reduce emissions. It can be done. And while the president’s plan may be light on details, he is at least pointing the country in the right direction.
Obama is directing his administration to launch the first-ever federal regulations on heat-trapping gases emitted by new and existing power plants, boost renewable energy production on federal lands, increase efficiency standards and prepare communities to deal with higher temperatures.
The ideology of the cancer cell. June 30:
It takes extraordinary intellectual insulation to continue rejecting the scientific evidence of global climate change. By analogy, imagine buying a house condemned as unsafe by 97 out of 100 home inspectors, eating in a restaurant that had failed 97 out of 100 health inspections, or the same proportion of oncologists when they tell you to start therapy immediately.
But even those who are prepared to argue forcefully for action on the climate crisis still observe powerful taboos against questioning the desirability of continued economic growth. To fetishize economic expansion ignores the fact that we live on a finite planet with finite resources; it’s like saying that gaining weight is healthy for infants, so it must be good for adults as well.
Infinite expansion is impossible in a bounded area; we can have sustainability or growth, but not both. If we wish a viable long-term future for humanity, this is a debate we need to have.
Warren Senders