455
PPM And Counting...
By John Blair
12 October, 2007
Dissident
Voice
Recent
reports from Australia saying that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) final Assessment due out Nov. 7 will show that we have
already eclipsed the CO2 concentration of 450 PPM CO2, that we had previously
hoped to remain under. The report will show that we have played the
waiting game for too long. It will show that the politicians
introducing mediocre measures for hopeful mitigation that
will take decades to accomplish is simply too little too late.
The time has come to take
the gloves off in the way we treat the politicians and people who continue
to acquiesce to the industries and those responsible for staying this
apparently do nothing course.
Sure it is important to reduce
our emissions of CO2 by at least 80% by 2050 but reaching that goal
some 42 years from today will leave us in a huge quandary as a species
unless we begin to make substantial headway in those reductions immediately.
From my perspective
that means:
1. We must universally call
for a moratorium on all new coal plants, whether they claim to be Capture
and Sequestration ready or not. The only exception might be the FutureGen
facility which is the taxpayer funded project designed to demonstrate
the veracity of their claim of zero emissions. All other coal proposals
should be universally opposed if we are going to make any headway in
this most serious issue. It is certain that no new coal plants should
be built unless they are not only equipped but can capture 100% of their
carbon emissions and store them permanently.
2. Existing coal plants should
be completely phased out over the next twenty years, beginning with
the oldest first, while allowing research on ways to capture the carbon
emissions from those newer plants. Once, we have proven that pulverized
coal can be adapted for carbon capture, then we must use the demonstrated
technology to sequester it that is proven by FutureGen to immediately
capture and store the carbon from those plants. If it is not economical
or physically practical to do that, then those plants should also be
taken out of service, perhaps mothballed until the economics or the
technology allows then to return to service without emitting carbon.
3. We must undertake a massive
program to educate people of the seriousness of the climate change issue
and the importance of their personal commitment to conserving energy
and reducing their personal carbon footprint. We need to change the
paradigm that conservation is some relic from 1975 or World War 2 and
that the only way that we can maintain even a semblance of our current
wasteful lifestyles will be to eliminate wasteful consumption and attitudes
universally throughout the world.
4. We must demand increased
production and end-use energy efficiency, pushing congress to pass mandatory
efficiency standards that are significantly higher than those in place
today. While the market should probably force the necessary changes,
once we have accomplished #3, it will probably require some sort of
government backed “incentives” to encourage development
of new technologies that will supplant existing wasteful living.
5. As people who are demanding
a better way, we, the environmental movement, should set a major example
for the rest of the world and declare that we will not have a single
new conference on global warming that does not incorporate video conferencing
so that we do not have to travel long distances to discuss how others
should cut back on their carbon emissions. The first video conference
I attended was in 1991. It worked then and is significantly better now.
We could all equip our own personal work stations with the hardware
and software necessary to permit this sort of advance in our mission.
Tell me why twenty or two hundred people should hop on airplanes and
travel to some distant city to discuss the seriousness of any problem
when we can do the same function electronically?
To accomplish the partial
solutions I have outlined, my group, Valley Watch offers the following
two campaigns for your perusal and use.
CONSERVATION IS COOL!
There is something wrong
when the slightest mention of the word conservation brings admonishment
from environmental leaders just because some uninformed focus group
thought that conservation conjured up images of jimmy Carter sitting
by the fireplace in his cardigan sweater asking us to personally sacrifice
to save energy. Frankly, I wish we had a leader like that today who
would tell the truth even though it might hurt him/her politically.
By changing the paradigm
to Conservation is Cool! and getting all those celebrities who pledge
to help us win this battle to join in, we can make a certain level of
personal sacrifice seem not only like a duty but also a blessing. Once
people begin thinking about ways to Conserve, then a whole new generation
will understand that waste is no longer an option.
Such a paradigm shift could
yield huge economic opportunity with its decentralized production and
consumption of goods and services. We may even find that such an “ethic”
actually yields reduced reliance on fossil fuels and thus might even
promote peace as well as prosperity. Wouldn’t that be a huge dividend?
20X10
To prod people toward a more
Conservative path of consumption and to eliminate waste, Valley Watch
has initiated a program where we solicit personal commitments from people
to cut their personal energy use by 20% by the year 2010.
If you think that is too
lofty a goal, my experience say that it is not. For years, I have made
the easy efforts to Conserve electricity and gas for home heating. I
thought I was doing pretty well until I started telling whoever would
listen that they should cut their own consumption of energy if they
wanted to have a decent world for their grand kids.
Hoping not to be perceived
as a hypocrite, I made my own commitment to reducing my energy consumption
by 20X10. Guess what, it did not take anywhere near three years. I was
able to do that much by simply consolidating trips, replacing incandescent
bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps and by using my head, looking for
additional ways to conserve. Turn out the lights, Stupid!
My energy consumption at
home has been reduced between 25 and 30% in 2007 over 2006. My lifestyle
has only changed in the fact that I wear sweaters and jackets in the
winter and use less air conditioning in the summer. Actually, my family
has not used our air conditioner for the last five summers, but that
is another story.
Frankly, there has been NO
sacrifice involved in this effort. Now, I am trying to afford an EnergyStar
refrigerator which could put me over the 30% mark when I do.
My point is this, since we
have already passed the threshold we hoped to hold greenhouse gas concentrations
to by 2050, it is time for serious action. It is time for serious policy
and it is time for a level of personal commitment from all of earth’s
human population to reduce their use of fossil fuels.
We’ve already gone
past the tipping point, now it is a matter of the survival of our species
and all the others that share on this earth. If we cannot make those
personal choices to protect ourselves and our progeny, we certainly
do not deserve the mantel of dominion over this earth and we will likely
perish from it as a result.
Sometimes such choices are
hard but I would rather give myself a choice because doing so at least
gives our kids a chance.
John Blair is
a longtime environmental health advocate who serves as president of
Valley
Watch in Evansville, IN. He is also a Pulitzer Prize winning
photographer and freelance writer.
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