A Drawing of the Homunculus.

There have been times, in human history, where we’ve gotten a few things wrong.  The theory about the sun revolving around the Earth, for instance.  Or how about the one where dinosaurs lived among early humans (ok some people still believe that… check out your nearest creationist museum for evidence).  In the 1900’s, Phrenologists were convinced that you could learn someone’s personality traits by “reading” the bumps on their head.  And in medieval times people thought frogs were born from mud.  We may look back and conclude that these stabs at scientific truth reflect somewhat poorly on our collective intelligence, but back in the day, that stuff was as true as it could get!

My favorite example of ‘theories of yore’ gone sour is that of The Homunculus. Aside from being delightful to pronounce, the Homunculus Theory has an interesting take on human reproduction, circa the 17th century.  It arose after scientists began using microscopes to look at, well, lots of things, and they discovered little “animals” (which they named Animalcules) swimming around in semen.

“[Homunculists] held the belief that the sperm was in fact a “little man” (homunculus) that was placed inside a woman for growth into a child. This seemed to them to neatly explain many of the mysteries of conception. It was later pointed out that if the sperm was a homunculus, identical in all but size to an adult, then the homunculus may have sperm of its own.  This led to the belief that all beings on earth contained all the future progeny of the planet within them, just getting tinier and tinier, much like Russian dolls.” -Wikipedia

While the Homunculus had a good run, it just couldn’t last in the scientific discourse because better and more appropriate theories surfaced that more accurately explained conception.

I think carbon capping is our modern-day homunculus.

The theory is just plain wrong.  It operates in a false paradigm: one where the cost of emissions reductions doesn’t matter politically or economically.  That would certainly be nice, and cap and trade might succeed if it were true, but unfortunately, that assumption is not based on reality.  Carbon Capping is a false theory two reasons:

1. Political Reality.  U.S. Congress won’t pass a climate plan that even moderately increases energy prices, as we saw most recently with Lieberman-Warner (and repeatedly over the past 20 years of failed climate legislation).  Any carbon-capping plan that hopes to make an ecologically relevent dent in emissions would have to increase current energy prices significantly - that’s the whole point, making dirty energy expensive.  Yet the entire nation screams “no” when energy prices could be impacted, thus, no legislation enacted.  

To give you some real numbers to chew on, Lieberman-Warner would have had us trading at $35 per ton of carbon and it failed; experts are arguing that we need carbon to trade at between $70-$500 per ton to start with in order to get us on track for 80% by 2050.  For reference, the price increase in gas we’ve seen over the last year is equivalent to the effect that a $500 per ton carbon tax would have.  Given the massive national unrest due to skyrocketing energy costs, and the fact that gas is never going to go back down in price, do you think America is going to voluntarily vote for another price increase that shoots gas over $6 per gallon?  

2. Economic Reality. Even if we got a carbon capping piece of legislation passed, the ‘cost containment’ and ‘price ceilings’ and ’safety valves’ and ‘offramps’ would never let the carbon price get high enough to actually reduce CO2 to ecologically necessary levels.  We’d be stuck with an functionally ineffective policy that would serve as a ruse for legitimate action.  It’s a catch-22, because we’re in an entirely wrong paradigm of thinking!

So our modern day homunculus is the idea that in order to solve climate change, we need to make dirty energy expensive.  As the evidence of reality points out, it’s impossible given our political and economic climate to make dirty energy expensive enough to reduce emissions.

So how about a paradigm shift: let’s make clean energy cheap.

It’s an entirely different way of thinking about the problem.  Instead of fighting over how much we can slow CO2 (and be association, the economy), we’ll be fighting over how fast we can proliferate the technologies that will price dirty energy out of the picture.  It’ll be an breakneck space race to entirely transform society, rather than a self-imposed economic clusterfuck to avoid ecological apocalypse.  And no, my friends, you can’t make clean energy cheap by just setting international targets and then “letting the market do the magic”, as much as we loved that old strain of thinking that had us bickering over ppm.  

We’ve got to invest.

Call it Kennedy, call it Apollo, call it good old U.S. innovation.  We’ve got to shift our paradigm, embrace a new way of thinking, and get working on the solutions that will make dirty energy a thing of the past faster than any carbon market could ever dream of.  

If you’re one to study science history, you’ll know that scientific revolutions ignite as punctuations that massively disrupt the status quo and send researchers down an entirely new path.  Cheap clean energy is the revolution we must embark on, and carbon capping is the homunculus that’s better fit for the annals of the Smithsonian.

So I guess the point of my post today is just to say it: THERE’S A HOMUNCULUS IN THE ROOM!!!

Time to get it out.

Many of my housemates have noticed that I haven’t been around much this summer. This is a correct observation. “Where have you been?” they ask. “Working for a think tank”, I’ll say, as I slump through the kitchen at the tipping point of exhaustion, clutching my ever-flashing blackberry and mumbling about carbon pricing.

Many of my friends have supposed, and rightly so, that perhaps what I do every day is to attach my brain to a series of electrodes, and lower myself into a Vaseline-filled sensory deprivation chamber, and foretell future murders for Tom Cruise. They’re close. This article will give you (and them) all the answers you’ve been hungering for:

http://www.jumpintotomorrow.com/template/index.php?tech=134&category=15

“No more pollution…or ocean dumpage. FROM NOW ON WE WILL TRAVEL IN TUBES” -Jack Black

Jack Black, the modern-day musical genius, once said in response to criticism of his music, “I’m tired of all this nay-saying! Why don’t YOU create something!?” This mantra could be perfectly applied to the global energy economy.

Why aren’t we going full force to create some awesome, renewable, scalable solutions rather than blaming democrats for high gas prices, calling for more offshore oil drilling (hello!?), or whining about our ever-increasing emissions? It seems like we’re spending more time naysaying than pioneering the energy solutions we need to solve the energy/climate crisis.

Thankfully there is a growing light at the end of the oil-economy tunnel – and I needn’t look further than an article by Andrew Leonard in this week’s Salon to see it.

Leonard cites some fantastic new analysis from market intelligence firm iSuppli, which predicted on Monday that by 2010, “worldwide investments in the production of photovoltaic (PV) cells will rise to the same level as those for semiconductor manufacturing by 2010.” That means that in only a few short years, solar panels could be as normal, cheap and accessible as owning a PC. And that’s for consumers and businesses alike – you, me, everybody. Booyah!

Continued solar development is one step in the inevitable direction of “Solar Grid Parity” – the point at which PV electricity costs the same or less than power derived from the electrical grid (a grid fueled currently mainly by coal and natural gas). The question we need to be asking ourselves now is: what can WE do to help the market speed up the process to the parity party?

One word: federal investment. Okay, that was two words. But the concept still stands: without significant resources and federal leadership allocated to innovation and dispersion, private investors will take at least until 2010 to make solar technology hit the market big time.

Do we have until 2010? Not if you ask climate scientists. As it stands, we’re stuck with a 385ppm carbon concentration with a 350ppm ecological target and no concerted effort to turn our colossus oil-tanker of an energy infrastructure around.

[To be honest, this type of long-range thinking and investment should have been happening 30 years ago… Oh wait, it was – under Carter. When Reagan came in, renewable energy research was cut almost entirely from the federal budgets. But, that’s history and we’ve got to focus on the problems at hand].

The government should create a steady, incentivized renewable energy tax environment (eight year solar ITC extension for example), strong RD&D efforts, and a government procurement program, to name a few options – all could make the diffusion of solar technology happen at a much greater speed.

Don’t worry – I’m not one of those “the government’s gonna solve all our problems” types. I’m happy as a clam that private investors are running with solar production, and I want the market to mitigate climate change just as bad as the next capitalist. But I want these solutions FASTER, damn it!

And I think the best way we can help the private sector roll out solar faster than this dude smashes watermelons with his head is to pour some top dollar into the brightest minds at the best universities and energy research centers. If the federal folks who dropped the cost of a single computer chip from $10,000 to $20 in only a decade can do anything for solar, we’ll soon be swimming in renewable energy (once we make a decent investment).

So let’s quit the naysaying and get down to work CREATING (i.e. investing in) the clean energy economy we want to see. We should aim to be like Jack Black – he invented the greatest singing technology since yodeling, and we could invent the greatest energy technology since hydrocarbons.

Imagine a gigantic Ikea, 3 acres in size, except everything inside has been diverted from a landfill.  Down one aisle, hundreds of solid wood doors; down another aisle, porcelain toilet bowls.  Deep bins filled with forks of every size, bowls and kitchenware from the 1950’s to the 1990’s, light fixtures of every description hanging from the ceilings, walls of stereo equipment and more stuffed arm chairs than you can count.  It’s all quality, it’s all dirt cheap, and it all would have been sitting in a landfill if it wasn’t for Urban Ore, a for-profit “eco park” in Berkeley, CA.  Items are dumpster dived, donated via community drop-offs, or salvaged from dumps – underappreciated products with a much richer life to live. 

Once reclaimed the products are cleaned, priced and organized by a crew of 30+ staff who earn a “living wage,” including an income-sharing incentive, benefits such as paid vacations and fully-employer-paid health, dental, and vision plans for all fulltime staff and all their dependents.  Urban Ore is committed “to ending the age of waste by advocating and developing total recycling”.  They design disposal facilities for zero waste and publish technical papers in their spare time, and have helped entire communities from Humboldt County in California to the island of Kauai establish zero-waste systems. 

I frequent Urban Ore before buying any household item new, and have been known to stop by with friends for no real good reason other than to bask in the glory of what feels like the ultimate thrift store.  You can mine Urban Ore Monday through Saturday between 8:30am- 7:00pm, Sundays 10:00am ‘till 7:00pm at 900 Murray St (at San Pablo) in Berkeley, CA 94710.

Someday in the distant future, I’ll sit with my young granddaughter and show her pictures from the early climate change movement.

“Who are those weirdos, Grandma?” she’ll ask, referring to photos of polar bears in handcuffs.
“Oh, those were ‘the environmentalists,’” I’ll reply. “They used to think that it was a very good idea to dress up in ridiculous costumes, and try to scare people. They thought it would make people believe in climate change.”
“Why did they think that was a good idea?” she’ll ask innocently, “When they look like such freakin’ idiots?”
“Watch your mouth.” I’ll say. “We didn’t raise you to talk like that. But honey, I think they just decided it was fun, and didn’t care about the negative effect it had on the other 99.5% of the population. Which ironically, were the very people they were trying to get on their side.”
“That’s stupid,” she’ll say. “I want a popsicle.”

I struggle to understand the attraction that street theater, as an organizing strategy, has for some environmentalists. And for clarity, I define street theater in the environmental organizing context to include any form of direct action protest that involves costumes and props; giant walking globes, crying human polar bears, hippies on stilts, etc.

Sure, it’s really fun to dress up in costumes. Lord knows I relish Halloween critical mass in SF, or the chance for an 80’s hairspray spandex party with friends. But I don’t pretend to believe that wearing crazy costumes will help me convince anyone of anything, especially something so critical and polarizing as climate change. I think there’s 3 major chain-reaction problems with using street theater as a means to build a movement:

1. We look stupid
2. People feel alienated
3. It says, we’re different from you, therefore we’re against you

Looking Stupid

When was the last time you let a talking polar bear shift your views on a political issue? Maybe you buy your car insurance because of what a talking gecko tells you, but that’s a separate issue… The truth is, direct action street theater looks totally stupid to the vast majority of people who witness it, and it significantly undermines the credibility of the environmental movement.

A really valuable contrast is to look at the civil rights movement – did they dress up in crazy chicken costumes or walk around on stilts to get their message across? No. They wore suits and ties, professional dresses, and through their powerful imagery won the respect and sympathy of the American people for their issue and their human rights. When dignified black men and women were beaten and arrested on television – they were martyrs. When a human polar bear is handcuffed outside the White House, it’s just another crazy weirdo looking for trouble – no sympathy, no respect, no credibility. Is it really that hard to understand why conservative senators won’t listen to environmentalists? It’s because we paint ourselves as crazy!

Alienation

As a Berkeley student and environmentalist, I’ve participated in my share of protests that involved street theater. I can say, hands down, that every single bystander (someone who happened to come along the protest on their way to work, for instance) I witnessed at these protests felt utterly alienated from the cause. Not only alienated, but often scared, upset, and confused – like the female janitor I saw leaving the Citibank branch in Washington DC that Rainforest Action Network shut down over Powershift weekend.

She hurried along the outside of the building as the folks in gas masks and biohazard suits chanted “No New Coal” – a message that I’m sure was totally lost on her as she tried to escape the intense state of panic she was experiencing from the fact that her workplace being taken over by dozens of angry, costumed environmental activists. No sympathy was had by the cars that drove by either. Do the street theater folks actually expect average people that witness their antics to respond in support? At best street theater serves as entertainment, which might make a few people laugh, but it certainly doesn’t build the kind of legitimacy it takes to win political leverage.

Creating Visual Polarization

Ultimately, most people in America wouldn’t dress up publicly in an outlandish costume for any cause, even ones they truly care about. The fact that environmentalists do on a regular basis creates a line of division – it says: we’re different from you, we’re crazy, we’re against you. We’re going to get in your face, in a way that makes you uncomfortable, in a way that you yourself cannot relate to, and tell you to support our issue. It simply weirds people out.

The True Motive Behind Street Theater

I’m not naïve – I know the real reason behind protest street theater is to get media hits. It’s that simple. And in that sense – it’s effective. Reporters will certainly stand around all day and take pictures of stupid-looking environmentalists in weird costumes, and they will gladly publish these pictures en masse to further solidify the negative stereotypes of environmentalists in the media. I ask the proponents of street theater: Do you actually think street theater is effective in furthering our goals? Is it good to overload the American public with a barrage of alienating images that stereotype and discredit our movement? Should media hits, no matter how alienating, polarizing, and discrediting – be the central focus of our public outreach campaigns?

New Protest

If we’re really serious about solving the energy and climate crisis, then we need to be serious in our media tactics too. The powerful imagery of everyday Americans standing up for justice was what won the civil rights campaigns of the south, and we need to invoke that same compelling imagery today.

A vital lesson we can also take from the civil rights movement was the example of the freedom riders – whites who came to the south in solidarity with blacks and faced the same human rights abuses from southern government, which was subsequently televised and shocked the nation. Why were the freedom riders exceptionally effective in media? Because whites could relate to them – it took people like themselves standing up, facing physical abuse, and advocating for justice to move the sentiments of white communities who had less in common with blacks. To that end, as environmental organizers, we must strive to project ourselves as people that everyday Americans can relate to, not a bunch of stereotyped hippie radicals that people have come to despise.

Save it for the Afterparty

I don’t think a bunch of polar bear crazies are going to earn the credibility to win climate solutions in the U.S. Congress and in the U.N. – legitimate, professional climate advocates are. Let’s stop being our own worst media enemy and forgo the silly theater tactics for a credible, professional movement that more than just the most radical environmentalists can feel comfortable getting behind. Once we get substantial climate legislation passed in this country, we can bust out the polar bear costumes at the after-party.

Did you hear that one about the Jesus cult drinking the kool-aid?  Or those little Scandinavian hamsters that launch themselves off cliffs en masse?  Psychologists aptly describe the social phenomenon of, well, stupid collective decisions, as “the Principle of Social Proof”.  PSP basically asserts that, in the absence of certainty, we look to others for correct behavior – this is especially relevant in groups.  So in the case of the lemming, every little rodent assumes their neighbor knows what’s going on, until… Splat!  It seems silly, but humans, and even environmentalists (who are categorically different than humans, clearly), are guilty of the same mind-numbing behavior.

Take carbon cap-and-trade and outright carbon regulations, for instance.  Nearly every environmental group and their mother has endorsed these two policy prescriptions for global warming, even though:
a.)    Cap-and-trade passes a politically unfeasible amount of increased energy cost to consumers
b.)    The highest politically feasible emissions reduction via cap-and-trade won’t actually solve climate change, or even come close
c.)    There’s very strong evidence to suggest that regulatory targets won’t be met… think Kyoto

Why is everyone on the carbon-cap-n-trade regulatory bandwagon when the idea so clearly… sucks?  I call it a bad case of lemming-brain, or PSP.

There is a strong tendency for us to follow the lead of our most renowned and respected experts on scientific, economic, and public policy.  Often unquestioningly, we take their advice for granted, maybe all too similarly to our sisters and brothers over in the Heaven’s Gate cult.  And where exactly are our experts getting their precedent for climate change policy?  From what I can tell, it’s the Montreal Protocol, which banned CFC’s in 1989, and air pollution cap and trade policies of the 1970’s.  At first glance, Montreal is a parallel example to global warming: one single pollutant concentrated in a single source industry with a cheap and easy replacement and comprehensive global consensus on enforcement…

Oh wait.  CFC’s are literally nothing like green house gas emissions, yet we’re operating as if they’re in the same paradigm.  Same thing with cap and trade for sulfur dioxide – the policy was created for a single industry (coal) with a relatively easy solution (smokestack scrubbers) that were quickly retrofitted and the problem of acid rain was solved.  Unless I’m unaware of some magical emissions-capturing device that can be retrofitted on every tail pipe, smokestack, cow butt, wildfire, and landfill leaching point, we’re not really technologically nor politically in quite the same place with climate change as we were with the ozone hole and acid rain problem.

So why are we using these two examples to craft our climate change policy when their situations are utterly un-analogous?  CAUSE EVERYONE JUMPED ON THE SAME CLIMATE BANDWAGON!  Wake up lemmings, wake up!  Let’s treat climate change like the globally complex problem it is by calling for globally powerful solutions – i.e., a huge investment in renewable energy combined with carbon regulation that will drop the price of clean energy below that of fossil, making our climate change solution not only economically feasible, but economically powerful.  As the leaders of the youth climate change movement, we don’t have to remain stuck in the same cap-and-trade black hole that the older generation has fallen into.  And as the more evolved mammal species, this is our opportunity to prove that, at least on climate issues, we’re just a bit smarter than lemmings.

Break Through the book was known for its visionary politics of possibility – for advocating a new social contract that focused on unleashing human potential to solve our pressing issues, rather than curtailing our activity and deriding our existence through a politics of limits. Break Through broke the mold by saying it wasn’t the issues that defined progressive and environmental politics, but rather the way we approached solving them. It was our worldview, our paradigm, our language and our attitudes that determined whether or not people joined us, and adopting a powerful narrative of possibility was our best strategy for galvanizing people around solving our most pressing concerns.

Lately, however, the Breakthrough blog is feeling a little less visionary, and a little more “limited”. Limited to (or at least dominated by) negative critiques of other policy standpoints and thinkers, rather than boldly articulating a clear, pro-active view of its own. From the paradigm-shifters who took on the environmental movement by calling it out for its dismal narrative, I was expecting something a little more upbeat – if not to communicating their optimistic ideas, then certainly to at least walk the walk of positivity. With recent posts critiquing Lieberman-Warner, 350.org, and even Ed Markey’s iCAP bill, the tone of the site has been less than inspiring. It would seem that Breakthrough has fallen short of truly actualizing its namesake – at least in its day-to-day blogging.

But I won’t get into criticism here. Since the idea is to stay positive and create an inspiring vision for the future, I’ll outline what I think Breakthrough can do to fulfill the meat of its message.

1. Transcend pure criticism – rather than break ideas down, build ideas up!
2. Identify the unifying factors between groups, not the divisive ones. Seek to build alliances. Tackling the climate challenge and transforming American politics is a creative act, so let’s build a movement powerful enough to rise to the challenge of our generation – the Breakthrough Generation.
   
3. Focus on what “a politics of possibility” means for our day to day actions – and then do it. If it means making the blog a little more friendly, I’m all for it.

As a Breakthrough Fellow committed to the large-scale implementation of our ideas, I feel its imperative that our organization act in sync with our vision every day. Call it the Ghandi in me, but if we don’t embody the change we want to see in politics, that change will never happen. Breakthrough outlined a vision that inspired countless young people and is in the midst of launching a movement – getting our actions in line with our long-term goals is the next step towards building the future we’re striving to see.

China is growing faster than Robin Williams in that movie Jack, but U.S. environmental policy makers don’t seem to get it.  At least, they don’t seem ready to admit that China’s carbon-intensive growth is inevitable, and requires headier climate policy solutions than blindly hoping China signs onto a new Kyoto.  Rather than debate what to do given the Chinese energy explosion we’re seeing, many environmentalists are still stuck on whether to try to stop China from developing at it’s breakneck dirty pace, or to give in and try to help them develop cleanly.  It’s seems that they’re likening the situation to swimming against the current, or swimming with it.  Except with China, the “current” of rising energy demand is more like a gigantic roaring unstoppable tsunami, or maybe an asteroid hitting the earth.  Just kidding.  But it’s not going to be turning around any time soon.

Many environmentalists bemoan this new growth because of the havoc Western industrialization wreaked on our own ecosystems, the size of China’s population (over 3 times that of the U.S.), and the impending doom of climate change.  We can throw the spread of consumer culture in there too, because god forbid other nations around the world adopt our own wasteful, self-indulgent ways.  And yet, is China’s growth really all that unjustified?  They are, after all, lifting close to a billion people out of poverty – and I know, I know, “poverty alleviation” isn’t a traditional “environmental” value, but let’s blow our categorical minds for a second and pretend we care.  Modernization brought us nearly every social benefit and technology we enjoy today – universal education, civil liberties, white collar jobs, the internet, etc.  Why do Chinese peasants deserve any less?  It’s obvious they don’t deserve less – they should have all the rights and freedoms we’ve obtained from our own material security, and yet our environmental movement is essentially saying they shouldn’t by demanding that China slow its growth.

But I think the meat and potatoes of the situation is this: regardless of whether you think industrialization of the West was good or bad, regardless of whether you think industrialization of China will be good or bad, it’s irrelevant.  Because industrialization of China is going to happen anyway, so we might as well start inventing energy solutions that help the Chinese achieve their development goals in a clean way, rather than trying to stop them or hope they’ll see the green light totally on their own.

If you read my post yesterday, or if you consume fossil fuels, you know that our economy is headed into a recession due to the high price of oil and rising global energy demand.  We’re not going to Kyoto our way out of a recession, just as China is not going to Kyoto it’s way to poverty alleviation and development.  What will help both of our economies, however, is cheap renewable energy – and the high-tech jobs, industry and growth that will come with their wide-scale implementation.  That sort of investment-centered solution doesn’t require skimping, cutting growth, and leaving a billion people sitting in the dust of rural poverty.  It also doesn’t require the compromise of dirty coal to give people a decent standard of living.  What it does is require is the best innovation humanity has to offer, and a sizeable investment by the wealthiest nations on earth.  Let’s see it as an effort to promote something our forefathers would have found valuable: the universal right to food, electricity, and the pursuit of happiness.

In case you didn’t read it on your iPhone, Google it on your 2.5 pound laptop, or Tivo it on your 19-inch plasma TV / DVD combo (which you bought for $349.99 with your sizable disposable income) – we live in a modern age. There are more white collar jobs in the U.S. than blue collar, median income has increased steadily over the last century, and multiple homes, cars, boats and gadgetry (once reserved for the super elite) have become a common part of middle class Americana. Modernization – the process of building a wealthy, intellectually advanced, democratic society – has given us the freedom to pursue self-actualization, a college education, even freaking laser eye surgery! Our standard of living has never been higher, the population never more educated, our emotional and material security never more sure. Until gas prices started reaching $4 per gallon earlier this year.

With truckers striking, airlines fearing bankruptcy, and workers calling in sick to avoid the commute, our oil-driven economy looks as if it’s heading into a recession. Energy prices will only continue to increase over the coming decades, experts assert, with gasoline running $12-$15 a gallon in the not too distant future. The price of heating homes, transporting goods, generating electricity – nearly every energy-related facet of our economy will experience costs climbing steadily (or wildly) upwards. Let’s not forget that our carbon-intensive energy system is not only expensive, but it’s also driving climate change, which the IPCC reminds us will unleash extreme ecological and economic consequences over the next century if “business as usual” continues.

Rather than dwell on our rapidly increasing financial and environmental woes, however, it would behoove us to look at the assets we’ve aggregated as a society and how our modern world, with all of its technology, wealth and human capital, can be employed to solve our energy crisis. To put it bluntly: we have the power. We have the wealth (largest GDP of any nation in the world), we have the information (have you seen the internet recently?), we have the technology (solar, wind, hydrogen, hybrid, even transgenic algae), and we have the people (Nobel prize winners, engineers, physicists) capable of designing brilliant energy solutions. With more highly educated professionals, more renewable energy technology options, and more information exchange than any human society has previously ever seen, we are certainly the best prepared generation to take on the looming energy crisis.

So what are we doing about it? Let’s take a look at the U.S. government for starts. We’re currently debating a weak carbon-capping bill in the senate, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, that a.) won’t pass, b.) wouldn’t likely reduce emissions to ecologically relevant levels even if it did pass, and c.) is being used by senators as a litmus test to show constituents where they stand on the issue of carbon capping, in order to boost their fall re-election prospects (how convenient!). You can guess – if a senator comes from a carbon-heavy energy producing state (coal mining, oil, etc), they’ll be voting against this climate bill, despite the fact that U.S. climate legislation will be enacted fairly inevitably within the next two years. The prevailing attitude is this: “Let’s save action until after the next election cycle, until the next presidency, perhaps until the energy and climate crisis is so bad that every constituency, conservative or progressive, demands it…” – because only then will it be politically safe to take action. But by that point, it’ll be too late to really avert the beginnings of deep economic and climate disaster.

Jumping back to our modernized world, it seems as though this political stagnation is wholly unnecessary given the tremendous tools and capital we possess to take on our societal challenges. If we take the space race or development of microchips / the internet as any example, it’s clear that large federal investments in technology can yield incredible economic growth, create entire new markets (aka jobs), and produce substantial increases in the benefits we love about modernization: high living standards, wealth, freedom and security. And getting to the moon wasn’t even a life-threatening issue… Failing to solve climate change is. So why not treat a significant problem with the same optimism, intensity, and effort as we did our moon shot? There exists greater wealth, information and technology now than there did then, plus this situation is an opportunity to address and potentially solve a conflation of pressing issues for humanity (rather than just build a fancy space craft). The impending recession, the huge rise in energy prices and demand, the ecological and economic devastation of climate change – can all be addressed by investing significant cash in renewable energy RDD&D.

Don’t get me wrong – the Lieberman-Warner bill isn’t entirely futile, and a carbon tax is certainly going to be a necessary tool in our belt when we get serious about addressing energy and climate. But alone, pure carbon taxation falls on its face because the cost it passes to consumers and its effect on our GDP are both economically dangerous and politically unfeasible. It’s not just that our senators won’t vote to ramp up energy prices (at least not high enough to actually solve the climate crisis) – it’s that the American people themselves wouldn’t vote to support such an issue. What they are overwhelmingly in support of, however, is backing a large investment in renewables, roughly $30 billion per year according to the polling, to bring down the price of clean energy so it can compete with the dirty stuff. That’s the American way, and the only way we can retain, build upon, and hopefully spread the benefits of modernization we enjoy in our country. So let’s harness our modernity by unleashing our technology, knowledge and human potential upon the greatest opportunity humanity has ever faced.

It’s about time I got my Rachel Barge pyramid scheme integrated with Web 2.0, so here we go… more interesting posts to come