A Cultural Climate Change:

A Community Based Approach to Greenhouse Gas Neutrality

By

University of 

A thesis submitted to the

University of 

in partial fulfillment

of the requirements to receive

Honors designation in

Environmental Studies

November 2007

Thesis Advisors:

anti-copyright

2007 by 

Abstract

What defines the climate change crisis? More importantly, how do we solve it? I have attempted to provide a comprehensive answer to both of these critical questions. I present an analysis of the risks of climate change because common misperceptions about these risks are resulting in dangerously inadequate responses. I analyze the United States Congress’ initial response in 2007—two energy bills worth about three trillion dollars and five government reform bills—and suggest a number of changes that should be made. The energy legislation is worrying because it is in conflict with what the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends. Moneyed interests and a corrupted political process are producing legislation that is inefficient, unnecessarily expensive, has negative distributional effects, and is likely to not be compatible with sustainable development. Government reform is vital. I attempt to define the failures in American governance that have resulted from imbalances of power, an ignorant public, and a dysfunctional media. To address these problems, a cultural change that involves widespread political participation can not be overemphasized. Widespread involvement is critical to achieve sustainability and greenhouse gas (GHG) neutrality. To support these important goals, I propose that the United States Congress appropriate at least $500 billion per year for energy service corporations (ESCOs)—a ClimateCorps to provide public sector leadership and catalyze changes in behavior and attitude.

Table of Contents

Introduction p.1-6

PART I The Science and Politics of Global Warming

Chapter 1 Understanding Global Climate Change p. 8-39

The Physical Science Basis

Human and Natural Drivers of Climate Change

Direct Observations of Recent Climate Change

A Palaeoclimatic Perspective

Understanding and Attributing Climate Change

Projections of Future Changes in Climate

Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

Observed Impacts on the Natural and Human Environment

Current Knowledge about Future Impacts

Responding to Climate Change

Mitigation of Climate Change

Greenhouse Gas Emission Trends

Mitigation in the Short and Medium Term (Until 2030)

Mitigation in the Long Term (After 2030)

Policies, Measures and Instruments to Mitigate Climate Change

Sustainable Development and Climate Change Mitigation

Tipping Points

Clathrate Gun Hypothesis

Oil War

Amazon Forest

Conclusion

Chapter 2 Understanding U.S. Energy Policy p. 40-70

Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007

Carbon-Neutral Government Act of 2007

Comments

International Climate Cooperation Re-engagement Act of 2007

Comments

Research and Education

Comments

Energy Implementation Programs

Comments

Advanced Research Projects—Energy

Comments

America’s Climate Security Act

Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act

U.S. Energy Policy Synopsis

Costs

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change

Future Climate Legislation

Cap and Trade

Global Carbon Tax

Population

Land Use

AmeriCorps

Conclusion

PART II Reforms in American Governance

Chapter 3 Corruption and Power Imbalance p. 71-92

Fiscal Insanity

Dysfunction

Misuse of Authority: Buying Power

Moneyed Legislation

Subsidies

Corruption in Contracts

Holding the Executive to Account

Complicit in Torture

Unlawful Use of Force

Signing Statements

Action Agenda: Government Reform

Specific Reform Legislation

Conclusion

Chapter 4 Awareness and Political Participation p. 93-109

The Media

Media Reform

Civics 101: Republican Virtue

Elections

Community & Moral Conscience

Interest Groups

Climate Change Campaigns

Transition: Our Journey up to Now

Part III Rising to the Challenge: Achieving GHG Neutrality

Chapter 5 Case Study: Boulder, Colorado p. 110-118

Boulder’s Climate Smart

Green Points Energy Program

Renewable Energy Incentives

Community Leadership: the University of Colorado at Boulder

Conclusion

Chapter 6 A Cultural Climate Change p. 119-123

A Proposal for GHG Neutrality

The Organizational Imperative

Conclusion

Bibliography p.124-138

PART I

The Science and Politics of

Global Warming

Chapter One

Understanding Global Climate Change

Given the same information about objective climate science, why is there such a great disparity between people’s opinions about what policies to adopt? Professor John Adams of University College London suggests it is about how each individual views risk and nature (1995). Adams developed four views of nature and Geographer Mark Maslin (2004) adapted this model to apply to how different people perceive global warming (see Figure 1).

Some view nature as predictable and stable and a non-interventionist approach can be taken because it is benign in the context of human scale. This is false because it ignores palaeoclimatic data about rapid shifts in the earth’s climate and six global mass extinctions.⁷ Dr. David Pimentel and a number of organizations suggest humans have overshot a sustainable carrying capacity by more than four and a half billion people. Opposite of this nature-benign view is a view of nature as ephemeral. This second view sees nature as fragile and unforgiving. It is in danger of catastrophic collapse thanks to human interference, and the guiding management rule is one of strict precaution. This is obviously false because the earth is remarkably regenerative and can absorb and process much of the energy humans are creating.⁸ The third view of nature, a combination of the first two, is that nature is both tolerant and perverse and can be relied upon within limits to behave predictably. Regulation is required to prevent major excesses and this view of risk results justifies an interventionist management. It is this view that most closely reflects reality. And the fourth view is that nature is capricious and unpredictable. This view results in an agnostic concern and fatalist outlook.

Views of Nature (from Maslin: 2004)

Based on people’s risk assessment it is reasonable that people have a variety of responses. Some people do not believe global climate change is a threat because these people do not have enough information, and this is a problem.⁹ People are fluid in their beliefs and opinions shift depending on the evidence put forward. The following section about global warming should convince people that nature is tolerant-perverse: care must be taken not to knock the ball out of the cup. Precaution is necessary to prevent a collapse (a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political, economic, or social complexity over a large area for an extended time) due to the instability of clathrate reservoirs, disease, or war (Diamond: 2005). These are the three primary non-linear effects of global warming that could trigger a tipping point. The following section should also convince people that the ball is at the edge of the cup, precariously balanced.

The earth’s ecosystem can look after itself in minor matters but burning such massive amount of fossil fuels has created a serious problem. The limiting of GHGs is about keeping the ball in the cup. And the current scientific consensus is that a concentration above 450-500 ppm CO₂ would be pushing the system beyond stability. The problem is that GHG concentrations are now about 460 ppm and rising fast—about 2 ppm per year (Metro: 2007).¹⁰

The following is a synopsis of the three Summary for Policymakers reports authored in 2007 by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Groups I, II and III. It includes “The Physical Science Basis”, “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”, and “Mitigation of Climate Change”. With more than two thousand scientists from one hundred countries, the IPCC is the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history.

The great majority of these next three sections of my thesis are directly taken from the IPCC reports: it is important, I believe, to respect the IPCC’s exposition.

The Physical Science Basis

The following is to help understand the physical science of climate change that the IPCC judged to be most relevant to policymakers.

Human and Natural Drivers of Climate Change

Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years. The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.

Carbon dioxide, the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, has increased from a pre-industrial value of about 280 to 379 parts per million (ppm) in 2005. This level exceeds by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years (180 to 300 ppm) as determined from ice cores. During the last ten years (1995-2005 average), carbon dioxide concentration growth rate was 1.9 ppm per year.

Global atmospheric concentration of methane has increased from a pre-industrial value of about 715 to 1,774 parts per billion (ppb) in 2005. This level exceeds by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years (320 to 790 ppb) as determined from ice cores. Methane increases are due to anthropogenic activities, predominantly agriculture and fossil fuel use. Nitrous oxide concentrations have increased from a pre-industrial value of about 270 ppb to 319 ppb in 2005. Nitrous oxide emissions are more than one-third anthropogenic and primarily due to agriculture.

Anthropogenic contributions to aerosols (primarily sulphate, organic carbon, black carbon, nitrate, and dust) together produce a cooling effect. Other significant anthropogenic contributions come from ozone-forming chemicals and halocarbons.

Direct Observations of Recent Climate Change

The IPCC reports “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.” Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among the twelve warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperatures (since 1850). The average temperature of the global ocean has increased to depths of at least 3000 meters and the oceans have been absorbing more than 80 percent of the heat added to the climate system. Such warming causes seawater to expand, contributing to sea level rise.

Losses from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have very likely contributed to sea level rise. The global average sea level rose at an average of 1.8 [1.3 to 2.3] mm (0.07 inches) per year from 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993-2003: about 3.1 [2.4 to 3.8] mm (0.12 inches) per year.

At continental, regional and ocean basin scales, numerous long-term changes in climate have been observed. These include changes in arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones.

A Palaeoclimatic Perspective

Palaeoclimatic studies use changes in climatically sensitive indicators to infer past changes in global climate on time scales ranging from decades to millions of years. Palaeoclimatic information supports the interpretation that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1,300 years. The last time the polar regions were significantly warmer than present for an extended period (about 125,000 years ago), reductions in polar ice volume led to 4 to 6 m (13 to 19.7 feet) of sea level rise.¹¹

Understanding and Attributing Climate Change

Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. Discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes, and wind patterns.

Analysis of climate models together with constraints from observations enables an assessed likely (>66%) range to be given for climate sensitivity for the first time and provides increased confidence in the understanding of the climate system response to radiative forcing.¹²

Projections of Future Changes in Climate

For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C (0.36°F) per decade is projected for a range of emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C (0.18°F) per decade would be expected, due mainly to the slow response of the oceans. Decadal average warming is very likely to be at least twice as large as the corresponding model-estimated natural variability during the twentieth century.

The best estimate for warming in the twenty-first century is a low scenario of 1.8 [1.1 to 2.9] °C (3.24°F, 1.98 to 5.22 °F) and the best estimate for the high scenario is 4.0 [2.4 to 6.4] °C (7.2°F, 4.32 to 11.52 °F).

There is now higher confidence in projected patterns of warming and other regional-scale features, including changes in wind patterns, precipitation and some aspects of extreme conditions. It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent. It is likely that future typhoons and hurricanes will become more intense.

Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries to the time scales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized.

Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

Observed Impacts on the Natural and Human Environment

Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional changes, particularly temperature increases. There is very high confidence that recent warming is strongly affecting terrestrial biological systems, including such changes as (1) earlier timing of spring events, such as leaf unfolding, bird migration and egg-laying and (2) pole-ward and upward shifts in ranges in plant and animal species. Forests are expected to be particularly damaged because of the ecosystem’s low adaptability.

There is high confidence, based on substantial new evidence, that observed changes in marine and freshwater biological systems are associated with rising water temperatures, as well as related changes in ice cover, salinity, oxygen levels, and circulation. This includes shifts in ranges and changes in algal, plankton and fish abundance in high-latitude oceans. The uptake of anthropogenic carbon since 1750 has led to the ocean becoming more acidic and is the primary threat to the stability of coral reefs and other species that rely on calcium shells (one-third of all ocean species).

Effects of temperature increase have been documented in the following: (1) effects on agricultural and forestry management at Northern Hemisphere higher latitudes, such as earlier spring planting of crops, and alterations in disturbance regimes of forests due to fires and pests; (2) some aspects of human health, such as heat-related mortality in Europe, infectious disease vectors in some areas, and allergenic pollen in Northern Hemisphere high and mid-latitudes; and (3) some human activities in the Arctic (e.g., hunting and travel over snow and ice) and in lower-elevation alpine areas (such as mountain sports).

For example, in the Sahelian region of Africa, warmer and drier conditions have led to a reduced length of growing season with detrimental effects on crops. In southern Africa, longer dry seasons and more uncertain rainfall are prompting adaptation measures.

Current Knowledge about Future Impacts

Drought-affected areas will likely increase in extent. Heavy precipitation events, which are likely to increase in frequency, will add to flood risk. In the course of the century, water supplies stored in glaciers and snow cover are projected to decline, reducing water availability in regions supplied by melt-water from major mountain ranges, where more than one-sixth of the world population lives.

The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g., flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification), and other global change drivers (e.g., land-use change, pollution, over-exploitation of resources).

Approximately twenty to thirty percent of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed 1.5-2.5°C (2.7 to 4.5°F). For example, corals are vulnerable to thermal stress and have low adaptive capacity. Increases in sea surface temperature of about 1-3°C (1.8 to 5.4°F) are projected to result in more frequent coral bleaching events and widespread mortality.

Over the course of this century, net carbon uptake by terrestrial ecosystems is likely to peak before mid-century and then weaken or even reverse, thus amplifying climate change. At lower latitudes, especially seasonally dry and tropical regions, crop productivity is projected to decrease for even small local temperature increases (1-2°C, 1.8-3.6°F), which would increase the risk of hunger.

Coasts are projected to be exposed to increasing risks, including coastal erosion due to climate change and sea-level rise. The effect will be exacerbated by increasing human-induced pressures on coastal areas. Many millions more people are projected to be flooded every year due to sea-level rise by the 2080s. The numbers affected will be largest in the mega-deltas of Asia and Africa while small islands are especially vulnerable. Adaptation for coasts will be more challenging in developing countries than in developed countries, due to constraints on financial resources.

The most vulnerable industries, settlements, and societies are generally those in coastal and river flood plains, those whose economies are closely linked with climate-sensitive resources, and those in areas prone to extreme weather events, especially where rapid urbanization is occurring. Poor communities can be especially vulnerable, in particular those concentrated in high-risk areas. The poor tend to have more limited adaptive capacities, and are more dependent on climate-sensitive resources such as local water and food supplies.¹³

Where extreme weather events become more intense and/or more frequent, the economic and social costs of those events will increase. Climate change impacts spread from directly impacted areas and sectors to other areas and sectors through extensive and complex linkages.

Projected climate change-related exposures are likely to affect the health status of millions of people, particularly those with low adaptive capacity, through: (1) increases in malnutrition and consequent disorders, with implications for child growth and development; (2) increased deaths, disease and injury due to heatwaves, floods, storms, fires and droughts; (3) the increased burden of diarrhoeal disease; (4) the increased frequency of cardio-respiratory diseases due to higher concentrations of ground-level ozone related to climate change; and (5) the altered spatial distribution of some infectious disease vectors.

Critically important will be factors that directly shape the health of populations such as:

• education,

• health care,

• public health initiatives, and

• infrastructure and economic development.

In North America, warming in western mountains is projected to cause decreased snowpack, more winter flooding, and reduced summer flows, exacerbating competition for over-allocated water resources. Disturbances from pests, diseases and fire are projected to have increasing impacts on forests, with an extended period of high fire risk and large increases in area burned.

Moderate climate change in the early decades of the century is projected to increase aggregate yields of rain-fed agriculture by five to twenty percent but with important variability among regions.

Coastal communities and habitats will be increasingly stressed by climate change impacts interacting with development and pollution. Population growth and the rising value of infrastructure in coastal area increase vulnerability to climate variability and future climate change. Current adaptation is uneven and readiness for increased exposure is low.

Impacts due to altered frequencies and intensities of extreme weather, climate and sea-level events are very likely to change. Some large-scale climate events have the potential to cause very large impacts, especially after the twenty-first century. Impacts of climate change will vary regionally but, aggregated and discounted to the present, they are very likely to impose net annual costs which will increase over time as global temperatures increase.

The complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the West Antarctic ice sheet would lead to a contribution to sea-level rise of up to 7 m (23 feet) and about 5 m (16.4 feet), respectively. It is very unlikely that the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) in the North Atlantic will undergo a large abrupt transition during the twenty-first century. But slowing of the MOC is very likely during this century. This change is likely to include changes to marine ecosystem productivity, fisheries, ocean carbon dioxide uptake, oceanic oxygen concentrations, and terrestrial vegetation.

Responding to Climate Change

Some adaptation is occurring now, to observed and projected future climate change, but on a limited basis. Adaptation will be necessary to address impacts resulting from the warming which is already unavoidable due to past emissions. Unavoidable warming is about 0.6°C (1.08°F) by the end of the century even if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations remain at 2000 levels. A wide array of adaptation options is available, but more extensive adaptation than is currently occurring is required to reduce vulnerability to future climate change. There are barriers, limits and costs, but these are not fully understood.

The array of potential adaptive responses available to human societies is very large, ranging from purely technological (e.g., sea defenses), through behavioral (e.g., altered food and recreational choices), to managerial (e.g., altered farm practices) and to policy (e.g., planning regulations). While most technologies and strategies are known and developed in some countries, the assessed literature does not indicate how effective various options are at fully reducing risks, particularly at higher levels of warming and related impacts, and for vulnerable groups. In addition, there are formidable barriers to the implementation of adaptation:

• environmental,

• economic,

• information,

• social,

• attitudinal, and

• behavioral

For developing countries, availability of resources and building adaptive capacity are particularly important.

Adaptation alone is not expected to cope with all the projected effects of climate change, and especially not over the long term as most impacts increase in magnitude.

Vulnerability to climate change can be exacerbated by the presence of other stresses. Future vulnerability depends not only on climate change but also on the development pathway. Sustainable development can reduce vulnerability to climate change, and climate change could impede nations’ abilities to achieve sustainable development pathways.

Many impacts can be avoided, reduced, or delayed by mitigation. A portfolio of adaption and mitigation measures can diminish the risks associated with climate change. Unmitigated climate change would, in the long run, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt. Such portfolios should combine policies with incentive-based approaches, and actions are needed at all levels from the individual citizen through to national governments and international organizations.

“Mitigation of Climate Change”

Greenhouse Gas Emission Trends

Global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) have grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of 70 percent between 1970 and 2004. In 2004 UNFCCC Annex I (developed) countries held a 20 percent share in world population, produced 57 percent of world Gross Domestic Product based on Purchasing Power Parity (GDP_PPP) and accounted for 46 percent of global GHG emissions. A range of policies, including those on climate change, energy security, and sustainable development, have been effective in reducing GHG emissions in different sectors and in many countries. The scale of such measures, however, has not yet been large enough to counteract the global growth in emissions.

With current climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable development practices, global GHG emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades. Non-mitigation scenarios project an increase of baseline global GHG emissions by a range of 9.7-36.7 GtCO₂-eq (25-90 percent) between 2000 and 2030. In this scenario, fossil fuels are projected to maintain their dominant position in the global energy mix to 2030 and beyond. Carbon dioxide emissions between 2000 and 2030 from energy use are projected to grow 40 to 110 percent over that period. Two-thirds to three-quarters of this increase in energy CO₂ emissions is projected to come from non-Annex I regions (developing countries).

Mitigation In the Short and Medium Term (Until 2030)

Both bottom-up and top-down studies indicate that there is substantial economic potential for mitigation of global GHGs over the coming decades, that could offset the projected growth of global emissions or reduce emissions below current levels.

In 2030 macro-economic costs for multi-gas mitigation, consistent with emissions trajectories towards stabilization between 445 and 710 ppm CO₂-eq, are estimated at a three percent decrease of global GDP. However, regional costs may differ significantly from global averages.

Depending on the existing tax system and spending of the revenues, modeling studies indicate that costs may be substantially lower under the assumption that revenues from carbon taxes or auctioned permits under an emission trading system are used to promote low-carbon technologies or reform of existing taxes. Studies that assume the possibility that climate change policy enhances technological change also give lower costs. However, this may require higher upfront investment in order to achieve cost reductions thereafter.

Although most models show GDP losses, some show GDP gains because they assume that baselines are non-optimal and mitigation policies improve market efficiencies, or they assume that more technological change may be induced by mitigation policies. Examples of market inefficiencies include:

• unemployed resources,

• distortionary taxes, and/or

• subsidies.

A multi-gas approach and inclusion of carbon sinks generally reduces costs substantially compared to CO₂ emission abatement only.

IPCC Table SPM.3: Key mitigation technologies and practices by sector. Sectors and technologies are listed in no particular order. Non-technological practices, such as lifestyle changes, which are cross-cutting, are not included in this table.

Changes in lifestyle and behavior patterns can contribute to climate change mitigation across all sectors. Changes in lifestyles and consumption patterns that emphasize resource conservation can contribute to developing a low-carbon economy that is both equitable and sustainable. Management practices can also have a positive role. Education and training programs can help overcome barriers to the market acceptance of energy efficiency, particularly in combination with other measures. Changes in occupant behavior, cultural patterns and consumer choice and use of technologies can result in considerable reductions in carbon dioxide emissions related to energy use in buildings.

Transport Demand Management includes urban planning (to reduce the demand for travel) and provision of information and educational techniques (to reduce car usage and lead to an efficient driving style) can support GHG mitigation. In industry, management tools that include staff training, reward systems, regular feedback, documentation of existing practices can help overcome industrial organization barriers, reduce energy use, and GHG emissions.

While studies use different methodologies, in all analyzed world regions near-term health co-benefits from reduced air pollution as a result of actions to reduce GHG emissions can be substantial and may offset a substantial fraction of mitigation costs.

Integrating air pollution abatement and climate change mitigation policies offers potentially large cost reductions compared to treating those policies in isolation. Co-benefits include:

• increased energy security,

• increased agricultural production, and 

• reduced pressure on natural ecosystems due to decreased tropospheric ozone concentrations.

New energy infrastructure investments in developing countries, upgrades of energy infrastructure in industrialized countries, and policies that promote energy security, can, in many cases, create opportunities to achieve GHG emission reductions compared to baseline scenarios. Additional co-benefits are country-specific but often include air pollution abatement, balance of trade improvement, provision of modern energy services to rural areas and employment.

Future energy infrastructure investment decisions, expected to total over $20 trillion between now and 2030, will have long term impacts on GHG emissions because of the long life-times of energy plants and other infrastructure capital stock. The widespread diffusion of low-carbon technologies may take many decades, even if early investments in these technologies are made attractive.

It is often more cost-effective to invest in end-use energy efficient improvement than in increasing energy supply to satisfy demand for energy services. Efficiency improvement has a positive effect on energy security, local and regional air pollution abatement, and employment.

Renewable energy generally has a positive effect on energy security, employment and on air quality. Given costs relative to other supply options, renewable electricity, which accounted for eighteen percent of the global electricity supply in 2005, can have a thirty to thirty-five percent share of the total electricity supply in 2030 at carbon prices up to fifty dollars per ton of CO₂-eq.

The higher the market prices of fossil fuels, the more low-carbon alternatives will be competitive, although price volatility will be a disincentive for investors.¹⁴ Higher priced conventional oil resources, on the other hand, may be replaced by high carbon alternatives such as from oil sands, oil shales, heavy oils, and synthetic fuels from coal and gas, leading to increasing GHG emissions, unless production plants are equipped with carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS).

Given costs relative to other supply options, nuclear power, which accounted for sixteen percent of the electricity supply in 2005, can have an eighteen percent share of the total electricity supply in 2030 at carbon prices up to fifty dollars per ton of CO₂-eq but safety, weapons proliferation and waste remain as constraints.

CCS in underground geological formations is a new technology with the potential to make an important contribution to mitigation by 2030. Technical, economic and regulatory developments will affect the actual contribution.

There are multiple mitigation options in the transport sector, but their effect may be counteracted by growth in the sector. Mitigation options are faced with many barriers, such as consumer preferences and lack of policy frameworks. Realizing emissions reductions in the transport sector is often a co-benefit of addressing traffic congestion, air quality, and energy security.

Improved vehicle efficiency measures, leading to fuel savings, in many cases have net benefits (at least for light-duty vehicles), but the market potential is much lower than the economic potential due to the influence of other consumer considerations, such as performance and size. Market forces alone, including rising fuel costs, are therefore not expected to lead to significant emission reductions.

Biofuels might play an important role in addressing GHG emissions in the transport sector depending on their production pathway. Biofuels used as gasoline and diesel fuel additives/substitutes are projected to grow to three percent of total transport energy demand in the baseline in 2030. This could increase to about five to ten percent, depending on future oil and carbon prices, improvements in vehicle efficiency and the success of technologies to utilize cellulose biomass.

Modal shifts from road to rail and to inland and coastal shipping and from low-occupancy to high-occupancy passenger transportation, as well as land-use, urban planning and non-motorized transport offer opportunities for GHG mitigation, depending on local conditions and policies.

Medium term mitigation potential for carbon dioxide emissions from the aviation sector can come from improved fuel efficiency, which can be achieved through a variety of means, including technology, operations and air traffic management. However, such improvements are expected to only partially offset the growth of aviation emissions.

Energy efficiency options for new and existing buildings could considerably reduce carbon dioxide emissions with net economic benefit. Many barriers exist against tapping this potential, but there are also large co-benefits.

By 2030, about thirty percent of the projected GHG emissions in the building sector can be avoided with net economic benefit. Energy efficient buildings, while limiting the growth of CO₂ emissions, can also improve indoor and outdoor air quality, improve social welfare and enhance energy security. Opportunities for realizing GHG reductions in the building sector exist worldwide. However, multiple barriers make it difficult to realize this potential. These barriers include availability of technology, financing, poverty, higher costs of reliable information, limitations inherent in building designs and an appropriate portfolio of policies and programs.¹⁵ The magnitude of the above barriers is higher in the developing countries and this makes it more difficult for them to achieve the GHG reduction potential of the building sector.

The economic potential in the industrial sector is predominantly located in energy intensive industries. Full use of available mitigation options is not being made in either industrialized or developing nations. Many industrial facilities in developing countries are new and include the latest technology with the lowest specific emissions. However, many older, inefficient facilities remain in both industrialized and developing countries. Upgrading these facilities can deliver significant emission reductions.

Key barriers to full use of available mitigation options include:

• the slow rate of capital stock turnover,

• lack of financial and technical resources, and

• limitations in the ability of firms, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to access and absorb technological information.

Agricultural practices collectively can make a significant contribution at low cost by increasing soil carbon sinks and by contributing biomass feedstocks for energy use. A large proportion of the mitigation potential of agriculture (excluding bioenergy) arises from soil carbon sequestration, which has strong synergies with sustainable agriculture and generally reduces vulnerability to climate change. (Stored soil carbon may be vulnerable to loss through both land management change and climate change.) Considerable mitigation potential is also available from reductions in methane and nitrous oxide emissions in some agricultural systems.

Biomass from agricultural residues and dedicated energy crops can be an important bioenergy feedstock, but its contribution to mitigation depends on demand for bioenergy from transport and energy supply, on water availability, and on requirements of land for food and fiber production. Widespread use of agricultural land for biomass production for energy may compete with other land uses and can have positive and negative environmental impacts and implications for food security.

Forest-related mitigation activities can considerably reduce emissions from sources and increase carbon dioxide removals by sinks at low costs, and can be designed to create synergies with adaptation and sustainable development. About 65 percent of the total mitigation potential is located in the tropics and about 50 percent of the total could be achieved by reducing emissions from deforestation.

Climate change can affect the mitigation potential of the forest sector (i.e., native and planted forests) and is expected to be different for different regions and sub-regions, both in magnitude and direction. Forest-related mitigation options can be designed and implemented to be compatible with adaptation, and can have substantial co-benefits in terms of:

• employment,

• income generation,

• biodiversity,

• watershed conservation,

• renewable energy supply, and

• poverty alleviation.

Post-consumer waste is a small contributor to global GHG emissions (less than 5 percent), but the waste sector can positively contribute to GHG mitigation at low cost and promote sustainable development. Existing waste management practices can provide effective mitigation of GHG emissions from this sector: a wide range of mature, environmentally effective technologies are commercially available to mitigate emissions and provide co-benefits for improved public health and safety, soil protection and pollution prevention, and local energy supply. Waste minimization and recycling provide important indirect mitigation benefits through the conservation of energy and materials.

Lack of local capital is a key constraint for waste and wastewater management in developing countries and countries with economies in transition. Lack of expertise on sustainable technology is also an important barrier.

Geo-engineering options, such as ocean fertilization to remove CO₂ directly from the atmosphere, or blocking sunlight by bringing material into the upper atmosphere, remain largely speculative and unproven, and with the risk of unknown side-effects. Reliable cost estimates for these options have not been published.

Mitigation in the Long Term (After 2030)

In order to stabilize the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere, emissions would need to peak and decline thereafter. The lower the stabilization level, the more quickly this peak and decline would need to occur. Mitigation efforts over the next two to three decades will have a large impact on opportunities to achieve lower stabilization levels.

The range of stabilization levels assessed can be achieved by the deployment of a portfolio of technologies that are currently available and those that are expected to be commercialized in coming decades. This assumes that appropriate and effective incentives are in place for development, acquisition, deployment and diffusion of technologies and for addressing related barriers. The contribution of different technologies to emission reductions required for stabilization will vary over time, region and stabilization level. Energy efficiency plays a key role across many scenarios for most regions and timescales. For lower stabilization levels, scenarios put more emphasis on the use of low-carbon energy sources, such as renewable energy and nuclear power, and the use of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). In these scenarios improvements of GHG intensity of energy supply and the whole economy need to be much faster than in the past.

Including non-carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide land-use and forestry mitigation options provides greater flexibility and cost-effectiveness for achieving stabilization. Modern bioenergy could contribute substantially to the share of renewable energy in the mitigation portfolio.

IPCC Table SPM. 5: Characteristics of post-TAR stabilization scenarios.

Investments in world-wide deployment of low-GHG emission technologies as well as technology improvements through public and private research, development and demonstration (RD&D) would be required for achieving stabilization targets as well as cost reduction. The lower the stabilization levels, especially those of 550 ppm CO₂-eq or lower, the greater the need for more efficient RD&D efforts and investment in new technologies during the next few decades. This requires that barriers to development, acquisition, deployment and diffusion of technologies are effectively addressed.

In 2050 global average macro-economic costs for multi-gas mitigation towards stabilization between 445 and 710 ppm CO₂-eq, are between a one percent gain to a 5.5 percent decrease of global GDP. For specific countries and sectors, costs vary considerably from the global average.

Decision-making about the appropriate level of global GHG mitigation over time involves a risk management process that includes mitigation and adaptation, taking into account:

• actual and avoided climate change damages,

• co-benefits,

• sustainability,

• equity, and

• attitudes to risk.

Choices about the scale and timing of GHG mitigation involve balancing the economic costs of more rapid emission reductions now against the corresponding medium-term and long-term climate risks of delay.

Limited and early analytical results from integrated climate sensitivity are a key uncertainty for mitigation scenarios that aim to meet a specific temperature level. Studies show that if climate sensitivity is high then the timing and level of mitigation is earlier and more stringent than when it is low.

Delayed emission reductions lead to investments that lock in more emission-intensive infrastructure and development pathways. This significantly constrains the opportunities to achieve lower stabilization levels and increases the risk of more severe climate change impacts (Table SPM.5).

Policies, Measures and Instruments to Mitigate Climate Change

A wide variety of national policies and instruments are available to governments to create the incentives for mitigation action. Their applicability depends on national circumstances and an understanding of their interactions, but experience from implementation in various countries and sectors shows there are advantages and disadvantages for any given instrument.

Four main criteria are used to evaluate policies and instruments:

1. environmental effectiveness,

2. cost effectiveness,

3. distributional effects, including equity, and

4. institutional feasibility.

All instruments can be designed well or poorly, and be stringent or lax. In addition, monitoring to improve implementation is an important issue for all instruments. General findings about the performance of policies are:

• Integrating climate policies in broader development policies makes implementation and overcoming barriers easier.

• Regulations and standards generally provide some certainty about emission levels. They may be preferable to other instruments when information or other barriers prevent producers and consumers from responding to price signals. However, they may not induce innovations and more advanced technologies.

• Taxes and charges can set a price for carbon, but cannot guarantee a particular level of emissions. Literature identifies taxes as an efficient way of internalizing costs of GHG emissions.

• Tradable permits will establish a carbon price. The volume of allowed emissions determines their environmental effectiveness, while the allocation of permits has distributional consequences. Fluctuation in the price of carbon makes it difficult to estimate the total cost of complying with emission permits.

• Financial incentives (subsidies and tax credits) are frequently used by governments to stimulate the development and diffusion of new technologies. While economic costs are generally higher than for the instruments listed above, they are often critical to overcome barriers.

• Voluntary agreements between industry and governments are politically attractive, raise awareness among stakeholders, and have played a role in the evolution of many national policies. The majority of agreements have not achieved significant emissions reductions beyond business as usual. However, some recent agreements, in a few countries, have accelerated the application of best available technology and led to measurable emission reductions.

• Information instruments (e.g. awareness campaigns) may positively affect environmental quality by promoting informed choices and possibly contributing to behavioral change, however, their impact on emissions has not been measured yet.¹⁶

• RD&D can stimulate technological advances, reduce costs, and enable progress toward stabilization.

Some corporations, local and regional authorities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and civil groups are adopting a wide variety of voluntary actions. These voluntary actions may limit GHG emissions, stimulate innovative policies, and encourage the deployment of new technologies. On their own, they generally have limited impact on the national or regional level emissions.

Policies that provide a real or implicit price of carbon could create incentives for producers and consumers to significantly invest in low-GHG products, technologies and processes. Such policies could include economic instruments, government funding and regulation. An effective carbon-price signal could realize significant mitigation potential in all sectors.

Modeling studies, consistent with stabilization at around 550 ppm CO2-eq by 2100 (see Box SPM.3), show carbon prices rising to twenty to eighty dollars per ton CO2-eq by 2030 and thirty to one-hundred fifty-fife dollars per tCO2-eq by 2050. For the same stabilization level, studies that take into account induced technological change lower these price ranges to five to sixty-five dollars per tCO2-eq in 2030 and fifteen to one-hundred thirty dollars per tCO2-eq in 2050.

Most top-down, as well as some 2050 bottom-up assessments, suggest that real or implicit carbon prices of twenty dollars to fifty dollars per tCO2-eq, sustained or increased over decades, could lead to a power generation sector with low-GHG emissions by 2050 and make many mitigation options in the end-use sectors economically attractive.

Barriers to the implementation of mitigation options are manifold and vary by country and sector. They can be related to:

• financial,

• technological,

• institutional,

• informational, and

• behavioral aspects.

Government support through financial contributions, tax credits, standard setting and market creation is important for effective technology development, innovation and deployment. Transfer of technology to developing countries depends on enabling conditions and financing. Public benefits of RD&D investments are bigger than the benefits captured by the private sector, justifying government support of RD&D.

Government funding in real absolute terms for most energy research programs has been flat or declining for nearly two decades (even after the UN Framework convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) came into force) and is now about half of the 1980 level.

Governments have a crucial supportive role in providing appropriate enabling environment, such as, institutional, policy, legal and regulatory frameworks to sustain investment flows and for effective technology transfer – without which it may be difficult to achieve emission reductions at a significant scale. Mobilizing financing of incremental costs of low-carbon technologies is important. International technology agreements could strengthen the knowledge infrastructure.

The potential beneficial effect of technology transfer to developing countries brought about by Annex I (developed) countries action may be substantial. Financial flows to developing countries through Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects have the potential to reach levels of the order of several billions per year but are at least an order of magnitude lower than total foreign direct investment flows. The financial flows through CDM and development assistance for technology transfer have so far been limited and geographically unequally distributed.

Notable achievements of the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol are the establishment of a global response to the climate problem, stimulation of an array of national policies, the creation of an international carbon market and the establishment of new institutional mechanisms that may provide the foundation for future mitigation efforts. However, the impact of the Protocol’s first commitment period relative to global emissions is projected to be limited.

The literature identifies many options for achieving reductions of global GHG emissions at the international level through cooperation. It also suggests that successful agreements are environmentally effective, cost-effective, incorporate distributional considerations and equity, and are institutionally feasible.

Greater cooperative efforts to reduce emissions will help to reduce global costs for achieving a given level of mitigation, or will improve environmental effectiveness. Improving and expanding the scope of market mechanisms (such as emission trading and CDM) could reduce overall mitigation costs.

Efforts to address climate change can include diverse elements such as:

• emissions targets,

• sectoral, local, sub-national and regional actions,

• RD&D programs,

• adopting common policies,

• implementing development oriented actions, or

• expanding financing instruments.

These elements can be implemented in an integrated fashion.

Actions that could be taken by participating countries can be differentiated both in terms of when such action is undertaken, who participates and what the action will be. Actions can be binding or non-binding, include fixed or dynamic targets, and participation can be static or vary over time.

IPCC Table SPM 7: Selected sectoral policies, measures and instruments that have shown to be environmentally effective in the respective sector in at least a number of national cases.

Sustainable Development and Climate Change Mitigation

Making development more sustainable by changing development paths can make a major contribution to climate change mitigation, but implementation may require resources to overcome multiple barriers. There is a growing understanding of the possibilities to choose and implement mitigation options in several sectors to realize synergies and avoid conflicts with other dimensions of sustainable development.

Irrespective of the scale of mitigation measures, adaptation measures are necessary.

Addressing climate change can be considered an integral element of sustainable development policies. National circumstances and the strengths of institutions determine how development policies impact GHG emissions. Changes in development paths emerge from the interactions of public and private decision processes involving government, business and civil society, many of which are not traditionally considered as influencing climate policy. This process is most effective when actors participate equitably and decentralized decision making processes are coordinated.

Climate change and other sustainable development policies are synergistic. There is growing evidence that decisions about macroeconomic policy, agricultural policy, multilateral development bank lending, insurance practices, electricity market reform, energy security and forest conservation, for example, which are often treated as being apart from climate policy, can significantly reduce emissions. On the other hand, decisions about improving rural access to modern energy sources for example may not have much influence on global GHG emissions.

Climate change policies related to energy efficiency and renewable energy are often economically beneficial, improve energy security and reduce local pollutant emissions. Other energy supply mitigation options can be designed to also achieve sustainable development benefits such as avoided displacement of local populations, job creation, and health benefits.

Preventing the loss of natural habitat and deforestation can have significant biodiversity, soil and water conservation benefits, and can be implemented in a socially and economically sustainable manner. Forestation and bioenergy plantations can lead to restoration of degraded land, manage water runoff, and retain soil carbon and benefit rural economies. The plantations could compete with land for food production and may be negative for biodiversity, if not properly designed.

Making development more sustainable can enhance both mitigative and adaptive capacity, and reduce emissions and vulnerability to climate change. Synergies between mitigation and adaptation can exist, for example properly designed biomass production, formation of protected areas, land management, energy use in buildings and forestry. In other situations, there may be trade-offs, such as increased GHG emissions due to increased consumption of energy related to adaptive responses.

Tipping Points

The most well known effects of climate change that have been studied and modeled involve linear relationships between greenhouse gas forcing and climate change. The IPCC expects impacts to increase in magnitude (exponential growth) and this concept deserves additional attention. There is increasing concern from scientists that climate change may occur abruptly. Recent scientific evidence point to many past changes occurring with startling speed. There is a need for the wider community of scientists and policy makers to recognize this new paradigm and act accordingly (Rial et.al: 2004).

America’s national security establishment is actively preparing for the kind of large-scale political destabilization that a non-linear environmental tipping point would unleash. Anticipating the possibility of a rapid “climate snap,” a 2004 Pentagon scenario envisions far more violent storms, more mega-droughts, and masses of refugees from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean swarming U.S. boarders in search of food. All over the world, countries would be drawn into resource wars over dwindling amounts of arable land, shrinking supplies of potable water, and increasingly scarce parcels of climatically hospitable territory, according to Pentagon planners.

The Pentagon is basing these predictions on the National Research Council’s report on Abrupt Climate Change (Schwartz & Randall: 2002). There are several economic and political tipping points that are likely to result from resource wars, disease, malnutrition, and migration that represents nothing less than a collapse in civilization. It is these non-linear consequences of GHGs and temperature rise that are the real concern.

Clathrate Gun Hypothesis

Gas hydrates refer to both the methane hydrate (clathrate) reservoirs in ocean sediments and the carbon in permafrost zones on land where the mean annual soil surface temperature remain below -5°C (23°F). The methane comes from decaying organic matter. In the ocean, a slight increase in temperature or decrease in pressure can cause the release of huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere. There are ten-thousand gigatonnes of stored gas hydrates compared with only one-hundred eighty gigatonnes of carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, twenty-one to sixty-two times the greenhouse warming potential of CO₂ (Kennett et.al.: 2002; Maslin: 2004).

The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis is that the destabilization of methane reservoirs is the primary cause for historic abrupt global warmings (less than one human lifespan) (Kennett et al.: 2002). Evidence suggests one event fifty-five million years ago involving about twelve-hundred gigatonnes of gas hydrates caused an extra 5°C (23°F) of warming (Maslin: 2004). At this temperature, shutdowns in the circulations of the ocean (MOC) are very likely to occur (Rahmstorf: 2000). One model calculation by Peter Cox predicts the breakdown of these hydrates within the next one-hundred years (Maslin, 112).

The methane hydrate reservoirs are generally not considered for several reasons: it is remote and poorly studied, little was known about them until recently, and modern reservoirs appeared stable until recently. But now ocean temperatures are increasing and the ocean’s ecosystems are the most immediately impacted by climate change. Scientists such as Buffett and Archer (2004), Kennett et al. (2002), and Maslin (2004) all believe that methane hydrates may be the “dark horse” of climate change.

Oil War

Oil is the lifeblood of the global economy. It is the energy responsible for extraordinary advances in technology, world trade, and industrial agriculture. An extended shock in the oil market would be disastrous for civilization and could cause a collapse in itself.

Oil is too heavily subsidized and undervalued. Burning it causes significant externalities that represent a massive market failure, which is why the IPCC recommends a carbon tax to address this problem. The organization Resources of the Future suggests a ten dollars per barrel oil tax as soon as possible. To avoid this politically difficult policy, they also propose a forty dollars per barrel floor price and funding for debt reduction, tax relief or subsidizing new energy technologies (Darmstadter: 2007).

The New York Time’s economic pundit Thomas L. Friedman thinks that we are in the “pre-climate war era.” Unless we create a more carbon-free world, according to Friedman, we can not preserve the free world. “Green has to become part of America’s DNA” (Friedman: 2007).

Even if optimistic forecasts about being able to maintain GHGs below 550 ppm is accurate, the world is facing an historic change that is unprecedented in scope and depth of impact. Becoming independent of fossil fuel resources is the best thing a community can do to buffer themselves from an impending oil supply disruption and the serious humanitarian impacts that will certainly follow (Heinberg: 2005).

Amazon Forest

The Amazon forest is dependent on the monsoon which every year brings massive amounts of rain. There are many climate models that show the world moving to a more El Niño-like state. This change would result in a much longer South American dry season and before long, the rainforest would be replaced by savannah (dry grassland) (Fedorov & Philander: 2000).

The forest is a huge natural store of carbon estimated to be sequestering about five tones of atmospheric carbon dioxide per ha per year (equivalent to about three-quarters of the world’s car pollution) (Maslin: 2004). Extended dry periods would lead to forest fires and this would return the carbon stored in the forest back into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming. Additional carbon, upwards of eighty percent, would come from increased soil decomposition (Schwartz, Randall: 2002 & Maslin: 2004).

At this time there is not enough evidence to say for certainty if the world will or will not move into a more El Niño-like state (Fedorov & Philander: 2000). Projections are far from conclusive: some predict more instability, some less, and the uncertain consensus indicates little change (Cane: 2005).

Our limits to knowledge about things like El Niño suggest taking precautionary action that would necessitate early and stringent GHG reductions. The earth’s ecological balance, as the Amazonian example suggests, is quite precarious.

Conclusion

An important characteristic of global warming is that delayed lag effects mean that action to prevent further warming has to be taken well in advance: a policy of immediatism is essential. The climate system at this time is naturally unstable, unpredictable, and highly sensitive.

Climate science is a field with many uncertainties but there is a growing consensus that the urgency and seriousness of global warming has been understated (Pacala et al.: 2003; Hansen: 2006; Oppenheimer et al.: 2007). The primary reason for an understatement of climate impacts is because factors such as methane hydrates, ocean circulation, El Niño, and the oil market are very difficult to model.

Five months after the IPCC’s 2007 reports came out, the IPCC issued the report Climate Change 2007 telling the public that GHGs were actually 455 ppm in 2005 and not 379 ppm. This was not expected to happen for another decade. This means that GHG concentrations are already above the threshold that can cause dangerous climate change (Metro: 2007).

The reason climate change is a crisis is because our actions today are going to cause widespread suffering in the future. Global population is growing at an unsustainable rate and economic volatility will cause food scarcity. Every effort should be taken to adapt to the impending changes and to mitigate effects for future generations. The tendency for governments to react to crises ad hoc rather than actively prevent crises is not compatible with this situation.

Global climate change could cause a global collapse in civilization but it is still possible to avoid this. There are many great opportunities that are synergistic with economic benefits, health benefits, and environmental benefits. The major causes of climate change are pollution and over-exploitation of fossil fuels, the land, and agriculture. These changes necessitate an adaptation to drought, floods, and water scarcity. Likewise, the earth’s ecosystems less able to adapt are going to be destroyed by these problems as well as wildfires, insects, and ocean acidification. We are experiencing the second worst extinction in the earth’s 575 million year fossil record (Siegel: 2000). The IPCC projects a ninety percent increase in GHGs by 2030 and recommends that we reduce our global GHGs by sixty percent by 2060. This means that we have to reduce projected GHGs by about one-hundred and fifty percent. This two and a half percent rate of reduced energy consumption is unprecedented.

Humans are not adapting fast enough. We are not prepared. Barriers to this change include environmental, economic, informational, social, attitudinal, and behavioral issues. One of the major problems is that two-thirds to three-fourths of the GHG increase is going to be from developing countries.

The global climate change debate demands we focus on at least three things:

1. Market failures. The full costs of energy use and production need to be internalized. The government needs to stop subsidizing fossil energy and start taxing it.

2. Behavioral patterns need to embrace greater conservation and less consumption.

3. Co-benefits that include health and environmental factors need to be included in cost analyses.

At the top of the list of issues to focus on, the IPCC recommends increasing building efficiency and forest and soil conservation (a priority in conflict with bioenergy production).

Mitigation policies include: regulation and standards, taxes and charges, financial incentives (tax credits and subsidies), information campaigns, and voluntary actions. Policies should be evaluated based on environmental costs, distributional effects (equity), and institutional feasibility. Action differentiation involves variations in when, who, (non)binding, fixed/dynamic targets, and static/varied participation.

Government has a responsibility to play a crucial supportive role in this energy change. The government needs to provide incentives for Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) and public sector leadership programs. The government also needs to shift subsidies for fossil production to renewable energy production. The American government arguably has the most important job in the world. However, it has yet to live up to the challenge in the recent future.

Chapter Two

Understanding U.S. Energy Policy

The best example of the United States taking the lead in climate change abatement is California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB-32) which sets targets of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, which will be a twenty-five percent reduction, and eighty percent below 1990 levels by 2050. This is by far the strongest state legislation and a landmark success, especially considering California is the seventh largest economy in the world. Governor Schwarzenegger said to the United Nations, “something remarkable is beginning to stir—something revolutionary, something historic and transformative… What we're doing is changing the dynamic, preparing the way and encouraging the future… Do not believe that doom and gloom and disaster are the only outcomes…Humanity is smart, and nature is amazingly regenerative” (CA Progress Report: 2007).

City and state legislation have provided tremendous leadership, but, as the IPCC makes clear, American federal leadership is imperative. However, the Bush administration has been extremely obstructionist and partisan politics has prevented any meaningful action by Congress. President Bush has supported voluntary reductions and limited funding for renewable energy in the controversial Energy Act of 2005.¹⁷ This ineffective approach has been widely criticized by almost everyone except for the oil industry and the oil industry’s congressional cronies.

The following is a review of recent action happening at the federal level. I will first review the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007 H.R. 3221 PCS, originally called the New Direction For Energy Independence, National Security, and Consumer Protection Act, but I will refer to it as the former. This bundle of climate change related bills has been passed in the House of Representatives (241-172, 95% of Democrats supporting, and 87% of Republicans opposing) on October 8, 2007.

I will then quickly summarize the America's Climate Security Act (S. 2191), introduced into the Senate in October 2007, and the Energy Policy Act of 2007 (H.R.6.ENR), which has passed in both chambers but has not been sent to the president.

Analyzing these energy bills is very informative with regard to what a majority of members of Congress feel America should do. It also provides insight into current and future federal legislation. I will present a summary of the major bills in this act and also provide comments about how each of these provisions compare to the IPCC and other research.

Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007

The House of Representatives passed a bill in September 2007 called the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007 (H.R.3221 PCS, introduced by Nancy Pelosi with 18 cosponsors in the House on July 30, 2007). It is about, as its official title describes, Moving the United States toward greater energy independence and security, developing innovative new technologies, reducing carbon emissions, creating green jobs, protecting consumers, increasing clean renewable energy production, and modernizing our energy infrastructure, and to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide tax incentives for the production of renewable energy and energy conservation. This legislation represents the first serious federal action with respect to global climate change. The following are important highlights from the House of Representatives’ September energy bill, H.R. 3221.

The United States, according to this energy bill, “has a critical national interest in developing clean, domestic, renewable sources of energy in order to reduce environmental impact of energy production, increase national security, improve public health, and bolster economic stability” (Sec. 4102(1)).

The Senate is currently deliberating on the H.R. 3221 counterpart and these two will have to be reconciled. Whatever passes will guarantee to be the single biggest direct investment in climate change mitigation in the world. It would provide trillions of dollars to mitigation efforts and millions to adaptation efforts. It is an amazing piece of work that should be considered essential in advancing global welfare. President Bush has announced his intention to veto the bill, and until the November 2008 elections there is a very low probability of sixty-six percent of both chambers of Congress overriding this veto.

On September 5, 2007, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) objected to any further proceedings with respect to this bill (Senate: 2007). This strategic objection is to buy time because there is not yet enough support in the Senate. To establish this support public organizations and businesses have an important role to play in pressuring all members of Congress. As part of the policy process, it is important that members of Congress receive feedback and input about their work, especially when it is as important as this. Reviewing and submitting comments to representatives in Congress about this legislation at all stages of this energy transition can be a productive contribution to this important debate. Public involvement is a necessity for government effectiveness.

Carbon-Neutral Government Act of 2007

The House of Representatives finds that some of the adverse and potentially catastrophic effects of global warming are presently at risk of occurring. Not being one hundred percent certain “does not negate the harm persons suffer from actions that increase the likelihood, extent, and severity of such future impacts” (Sec. 6002(4)).

To preserve the ability to stabilize atmospheric GHG concentrations at levels likely to protect against a temperature rise above 2ºC (3.6ºF) and maintain the likelihood of avoiding catastrophic global warming will require reductions of GHGs of fifty to eighty-five percent globally (Sec. 6002(5)).

A failure to comply with GHG reductions would exacerbate the pace, extent, and risks of global warming, causing harms beyond what would otherwise occur. “Although the emissions increments involved could be relatively small, such a failure allowing incrementally greater emissions would injure all United States citizens” (Sec. 6002(10)).

The emission reduction target goal is to reduce GHGs as rapidly as possible, “so as to achieve zero net annual greenhouse gas emissions from the federal agencies by fiscal year 2050” (Sec. 6102(b)(2)).

Comments

The first target set is for limiting temperature increases below 2ºC (3.6ºF). This is probably an unrealistic target that necessitates a significant energy shift compared to our current path. The IPCC estimates that a low emissions scenario would result in 1.8 [1.1 to 2.9] °C (3.24°F, 1.98 to 5.22 °F) increase in global temperatures.

With no time frame specified it is impossible to know when this fifty to eighty-five percent reduction is to take place by.¹⁸ The bill should be explicit in attaching a date to their reduction goals consistent with the IPCC recommendations of a 60 percent reduction in global GHGs by 2060. However, President Bush has been opposed to this, which is probably why there is no date attached to these targets.

The bill specifies a target for federal agencies to achieve zero net annual GHG by 2050. ¹⁹ This bill, therefore, is extremely misleading: the government is not targeting carbon neutrality, but GHG stabilization. This is a significant difference! Not only that, but this bill also defies the IPCC recommendation that zero net annual GHGs should be achieved by 2030, and decline thereafter.

International Climate Cooperation Re-engagement Act of 2007

The House outlines some important developments in climate change policy. The House finds “Climate change is already having significant impacts;” “Climate change is a global problem;” and that President Bush’s plan, announced February 14, 2002, set voluntary ‘greenhouse gas intensity’ targets which would allow actual emissions to increase by at least twelve percent by 2012 (Sec. 2101(8)).

The Kyoto Protocol entered into force on February 16, 2005, after Russia’s ratification, legally binding reductions in GHG emissions at an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels for industrialized countries by 2012. The Protocol currently restricts the emissions of countries accounting for only thirty-two percent of global GHG emissions. A more recent development was at a summit in Brussels, Belgium, in March 2007, where the head of governments of the European Union committed its Member States to cut greenhouse gas emissions twenty percent below 1990 levels by 2020 (Sec. 2101(13)).

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett told the United Nations Security Council that the Council has a “security imperative” to tackle climate change and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Council that “issues of energy and climate change have implications for peace and security” (Sec. 2101(13)).

The IPCC scientists believe that a 450 to 550 ppm ceiling might limit the global rise in temperatures to no more than 3.6°F and avert impacts of escalating scale, scope, and costs (Sec. 2101(14)).

The House believes that the U.S. should promote “global security through leadership and cooperation,” participate in international diplomacy with the G-8 and the United Nations, include market-based solutions and international emissions trading developed under the Kyoto Protocol, and seek international consensus on long-term objectives including a target range for stabilizing GHG concentrations (Sec. 2102).

The bill establishes, within the Department of State, an Office on Global Climate Change (Sec.2103(c)(1)). Each year the Secretary of State shall prepare and submit a report on the strategy, policies, and actions of the United States for reducing GHGs and addressing the challenges posed by global climate change (Sec. 2103(c)(2)(b)).

The U.S. shall help combat corruption in foreign governments to improve stability and reduce the probability of disruptions of energy supplies. The U.S. shall increase energy security by decreasing energy reliance on corrupt foreign governments and seek to instill transparency and accountability (Sec. 2104(1)).

Over one-billion six-hundred million people lack access to affordable energy services and this represents an energy security challenge. Inaccessibility impedes development in education, health, agriculture, and the environment. Over sixteen trillion dollars needs to be invested in energy-supply infrastructure worldwide by 2030 to meet energy demand (Sec. 2201(4)).

The U.S. shall support policies and programs in developing countries that promote clean and efficient energy technologies (Sec. 2202(a)). Development assistance will also include increasing public awareness and participation in the decision-making of delivering energy and environmental services. To carry this out, a total of one-billion dollars will be appropriated 2008 through 2012 (Sec. 2202(c)).

Comments

A 450 ppm stabilization target was a popular consensus among those advocating a more aggressive approach (NASA’s James Hansen, The Stern Report, Environmental Defense, U.S. PIRG, etc) because even 450 ppm stabilization “would imply a medium likelihood (about fifty percent) of staying below 2ºC warming (ISSC: 2005). But now that we are at about 460 ppm GHG concentrations in 2007, the goal of 500-550 ppm is appropriate.

In response to the statement that over sixteen trillion dollars needs to be invested in energy-supply infrastructure to meet energy demand, it should be noted that the IPCC recognizes investments in energy efficiencies is much more cost, health and environmentally effective. (Also, the IPCC expects that it will probably take about twenty trillion dollars in investments, not sixteen billion). Focusing on reducing energy demand rather than meeting energy demand should be the priority in developed countries. Effective policies demand that legislation reflect this basic recommendation.

In less developed countries the priority should be assisting with sustainable development. Significant resources will have to be dedicated to this end considering two-thirds to three-fourths of GHG increases will come from developing countries. Developed countries will have to dedicate at least several trillion dollars to developing countries—the sooner the better. One billion dollars is a great start, to be sure, but more will be needed before 2012, and this is one of the best ways for Annex 1 countries to meet the Kyoto Protocol targets.

Research and Education

The Secretary of Energy shall support ($90m/yr) the following programs: advanced hydrothermal resource tools, general geothermal systems research (Sec. 4204), enhanced geothermal systems technologies (Sec. 4206(1)), and geothermal energy production from oil and gas fields (Sec. 4207).

A technology transfer center shall be established to make available information on research, development, and application of technologies related to biofuels and bio-refineries (Sec. 4202). The Secretary of Energy shall submit a report to Congress on development challenges in (a) increasing to 2.5 percent the proportion of diesel fuel sold in the U.S. that is biodiesel (Sec. 4404) and (b) increasing to five percent of the transportation fuels sold in the U.S. fuel with biogas or a blend of biogas and natural gas (Sec. 4405). Grants shall be provided ($25m/yr) for research, development, demonstration, and commercial application of biofuel production technologies (Sec. 4407).

The Secretary of Energy shall conduct a study of the methods of increasing consumption in the United States of ethanol-blended gasoline with levels of ethanol that are not less than ten percent and not more than forty percent (Sec. 4409). Appropriations for bioenergy research and development are amended in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to increase appropriations by about one trillion dollars (Sec. 4412).

The Secretary of Energy shall conduct a study of methods of increasing the fuel efficiency of vehicles using biogas by optimizing natural gas vehicle systems that can operate on biogas, including the advancement of vehicle fuel systems and the combination of hybrid-electric and plug-in hybrid electric drive platforms with natural gas vehicle systems using biogas (Sec. 4414).

A report shall be submitted to Congress on the use of algae as a feedstock for the production of biofuels and on how to encourage and further its development as a viable transportation fuel (Sec. 4416).

The Secretary of Energy shall give grants ($25m total) to institutions of higher education conducting R&D of renewable energy technologies (Sec. 4417). The Secretary of Energy shall establish a university based R&D program and award five grants ($10m total) to study carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

The President shall establish ($10m/yr) an interagency United States Global Change Research Program to improve understanding of global change, to respond to the information needs of communities and decision-makers, and to provide periodic assessments of the vulnerability of the United States and other regions to global and regional climate change (Sec. 4614(a)).

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shall enter into an arrangement with the National Academy of Sciences to complete a study of the current state of the science on the potential impacts of climate change on patterns of hurricane and typhoon development and the implications for coastal regions (Sec. 4624).

A global climate change exchange program is to be established ($3m/yr) to strengthen research, educational exchange, and international cooperation to reduce GHG emissions. This involves the financing of studies, research, instruction, and other educational activities dedicated to reducing carbon emissions (Sec. 2207).

There is to be established a foundation known as the ‘International Clean Energy Foundation’ to serve the long-term foreign policy and energy security goals of reducing GHG emissions (Sec. 2302). The foundation shall make grants ($20m/yr) to promote projects outside the U.S. that serve as models of how to significantly reduce emissions and create a repository of information on best practices and lessons (Sec. 2303, 2307).

The Secretary of Energy shall submit to Congress, a study regarding the rebate program described in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (Sec. 206(c)). The report shall determine the minimum amount of funding the program would need to receive in order to accomplish the goal of encouraging consumers to install renewable energy systems in their homes or small businesses (Sec. 9035).

The bill also includes one-hundred twenty-five million dollars per year for energy efficiency and renewable energy worker training programs, National Energy Training Partnership Grants for non-profits, grants for States to administer renewable energy and energy efficiency workforce development programs (Sec. 1002(A)), and a Solar Energy Technologies grant program ($10m/yr) (Sec. 4305).

Comments

This bill provides a number of important incentives for renewable energy research: biofuels (over one trillion dollars), geothermal and hydrothermal (ninety million dollars), and solar (ten million dollars). Such a large emphasis on biofuel research is not consistent with the IPCC report about the vital importance of forest and soil carbon dioxide sequestration and land conservation.

There is an enormous disparity between over one trillion dollars being spent on bioenergies versus only one-hundred twenty-five million dollars for energy efficiency, worker training, nonprofits, state workplace development programs and twenty-five million dollars for higher education. The IPCC report does not support this prioritization. In fact, the IPCC supports the exact opposite prioritization.

The use of algae and cellulosic ethanol from agricultural waste and grasses should be emphasized because it has proven to be more energy efficient than producing ethanol from corn (Runge: 2007).²⁰ However, corn farmers have created an exceptionally powerful lobby that is preventing this from happening (see Chapter three).

Sustainable agriculture should be explicitly defined to ensure that bioenergy production does not limit pollution, does not compete with scarce water resources, and internalizes environmental and health costs and benefits.

This bill is void any dates to accompany targets of two and a half percent biodiesel, five percent biogas and ten percent ethanol. The final bill should reflect real targets that include time frames.

The bill sends a clear signal that there will be a future rebate program for home renewable energy. And if the bill is successful then we will soon be driving hybrid-electric cars fueled with biogas.

The biggest omission from the Research and Education bill is any support for information instruments. Congress should consider including an appropriation for primary public education to require a curriculum that includes making important behavioral change and increasing the public’s ecological and political literacy. Also, this act does not include any appropriations for the Environmental Protection Agency even though their website describes What We Do: “Further environmental education: EPA advances educational efforts to develop an environmentally conscious and responsible public, and to inspire personal responsibility in caring for the environment” (EPA: 2007).²¹

Energy Implementation Programs

The Biomass Research and Development Board is established ($236m) to coordinate programs within and among departments and agencies of the Federal Government for the purpose of promoting the use of bio-based fuels and bio-based products (Sec. 9008(1)).

The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (7 U.S.C. 8108) is amended to promote renewable diesel and appropriate a total of about one trillion dollars (Sec. 5008).

The Secretary of Agriculture shall conduct a competitive research and development program to encourage new forest-to-energy technologies. The Secretary may use grants, cooperative agreements, and other methods ($36m/yr) to partner with cooperating entities on projects that the Secretary determines shall best promote new forest-to-energy technologies (Sec. 5011).

The Secretary of Energy shall establish a program to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology (Sec. 4502(1)) as well as large-volume sequestration testing (Sec. 4503(3)). There shall be one billion and six-hundred and eighty million dollars total for 2008 through 2011 as well as five million dollars for the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a safety research program (Sec. 4504).

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 is amended by adding a program to award cash prizes (fifty million dollars total) to advance the research, development, demonstration, and commercial application of hydrogen energy technologies (Sec. 4701(A)).

The Secretary of Energy shall support R&D, demonstration, and commercial application programs of marine renewable energy (Sec. 4104). The Secretary shall reward grants ($50m/yr) to institutions of higher education for the establishment of National Marine Renewable Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration Centers (Sec. 4105; Sec. 4107).

A program shall be established for R&D of direct solar sources, including light pipe technology. There are to be $3.5m/yr appropriated through 2012(Sec. 4306). A program shall be established for R&D of solar-powered air conditioning. A program of grants ($220m total) shall be established for States to demonstrate advanced photovoltaic technology.

The Secretary of Energy shall establish a competitive program to provide grants ($65m/5yrs) to State governments, local governments, metropolitan transportation authorities, air pollution control districts, private or nonprofit entities to carry out projects to encourage the use of plug-in electric drive vehicles or other emerging electric vehicle technologies, as determined by the Secretary (Sec. 9403).

The federal renewable portfolio standard is amended to require annual percentage increase of the retail electric supplier's base amount that shall be generated from renewable energy resources. Electric suppliers must supply at least six and a half percent by 2015 and at least fifteen percent by 2020 (Sec. 9611, H.Amdt. 784).

Loans ($4m each) shall be given to help small businesses develop energy efficient technologies and purchases (Sec. 3003).

Other programs include (a) grants ($850m/2yrs) to improve public transportation services and grants ($40m/4yrs) to advance hybrid railroads (Sec. 8301); (b) block grants ($120m/5yrs) to states to improve energy efficiency, education, research, or other measures that decrease energy consumption (Sec.9094, Sec. 9098); and (c) a four thousand dollar tax credit for plug-in hybrid vehicles (Sec. 12001(b)).

Comments:

This bill includes an additional one-trillion two-hundred and seventy-two million dollars for bioenergy. This is an extremely exploitative approach that may not be in balance with the need for reduced consumption. The Congress is following a hard-path that is contradictory to IPCC recommendations. Appropriating $1,680 million for carbon capture and storage is an inefficient use of revenues. This is compared to fifty million dollars for marine energy, and two-hundred twenty dollars for solar energy.

The emphasis on creating energy from the forest is worrying because forest mitigation is expected to significantly reduce GHGs. Forests need to be conserved, not used for energy. Land-use and forestry mitigation will provide more economic benefit by not being harvested for energy.

Including a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of fifteen percent by 2020 is a big step forward, but because President Bush is opposed to this policy, it would be wise to accept a compromise that would eliminate this provision (unless there is a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override a veto, which there is not). Congress has debated and rejected an RPS seventeen times in the last ten years (Cooper: 2007) and the administration opposes even the addition of a narrow federal RPS for power generation (K&L, Gates: 2007).

On the other hand, an optimal national renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of twenty to thirty percent by 2020, rising to fifty percent by 2040 is much more appropriately aggressive (Cooper: 2007). The more aggressive target is in line with the IPCC’s support for “renewable electricity, which accounted for eighteen percent of the [global] electricity supply in 2005, can have a thirty to thirty-five percent share of the total electricity supply in 2030 at carbon prices up to 50 dollars per ton of CO₂-eq.”

The national renewable portfolio standard (RPS) is a great example of a mitigation/adaptation policy providing large economic benefit. A Pew Research Center report concludes that an RPS of twenty percent by 2020 would save consumers a total of $49.1 billion dollars nationwide or an average of one and a half percent per year (PEW: 2007).

Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy

The Advanced Research Projects-Agency—Energy (ARPA-E) is established within the Department of Energy to overcome the long-term and high-risk technological barriers in the development of energy technologies. (Sec. 4001(a)). The goals of ARPA-E are to enhance the Nation’s economic and energy security through the development of energy technologies, reduce energy related emissions, and identify and promote revolutionary advances in fundamental sciences. The Director shall target the acceleration of novel early-stage energy R&D of manufacturing processes for novel energy technologies. Congress authorizes the appropriation of $300m for fiscal year 2008, $1,000m for fy 2009, $1,100m for fy 2010, $1,200m for fy 2011, and $1,300m for fy 2012. No more than fifty percent fund allocation is for demonstration and coordination with nongovernmental entities for commercial applications of energy technologies and research applications (Sec. 4001(d)(4)) (Sec. 4002(b)).

Comments:

This bill appropriates four-billion nine-hundred million dollars over five years for long-term technological barriers and revolutionary science. It is worrying that Congress is placing such high priority and emphasis on technological solutions and so little on regulations and standards, taxes and charges, information campaigns, international development, or conservation. The IPCC explicitly reports that prioritizing bioenergy and technology, costs will be greater, inefficiencies will continue, and more effective tactics are being overlooked.

America’s Climate Security Act

Senator Lieberman (I-CT) and Warner (R-VA) have introduced the America's Climate Security Act (S. 2191) in the Senate on October 2, 2007. This bill is in the very first steps on the legislative process.²² Support for bill this is likely to be highly partisan.

The America's Climate Security Act includes the following:

• Capping Greenhouse Gas Emissions

  • Establishes a cap and trade system with 5,200 emission allowances in 2012 to decrease to 1,560 in 2050. This represents a seventy percent GHG decrease.

  • Includes agricultural and forestry offset projects

• Managing and Containing Costs Efficiently

• Allocating and Distributing Allowances

  • The emission allowances represent a starting percent of eighteen percent of emissions in 2012, raising to seventy-three percent by 2036.

    • Auctions and Uses of Auction Proceeds

    • Energy Efficiency

  • Updates state building energy efficiency codes and establishes regional heating and cooling standards.

    • Framework for Geological Sequestration of Carbon Dioxide

Environmental Defense issued a statement of support saying the bill would affect eighty percent of the U.S. economy and reduce emissions 15 percent below 2005 levels in 2020. Additional Support has been given by the National Wildlife Federation, Exelon Corporation, PGE Corp, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies (eNewsUSA: 2007).

Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act

The Act that is furthest along in the legislation pipeline is the Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act (H.R.6). Its aim, as it’s official title describes: To reduce our Nation's dependency on foreign oil by investing in clean, renewable, and alternative energy resources, promoting new emerging energy technologies, developing greater efficiency, and creating a Strategic Energy Efficiency and Renewables Reserve to invest in alternative energy, and for other purposes.

The following is a summary of major provisions in H.R. 6:

• Energy Efficiency

  • Voluntary commitments are supported to reduce industrial energy intensity; two billion and one-hundred million shall be appropriated for a low-income home energy program (Sec. 121), and fifty million dollars are appropriated for an energy efficient appliance rebate program.

  • Overall energy productivity should improve by at least 2.5 percent per year by 2012 (Sec. 252).

• Renewable Energy

  • One billion dollars are appropriated for weatherization rebate assistance (Sec. 206), fifty million dollars for a photovoltaic energy commercialization program, thirty-six million dollars for a sugar cane ethanol program (Sec. 208), and twenty million dollars for rural and remote community electrification grants (Sec. 209).

• Oil and Gas

  • New natural gas storage facilities are supported with subsidies for natural gas production from deep wells in the Gulf of Mexico and gas hydrate production incentives on the outer Continental Shelf (Sec. 321).

• Coal

  • $1.8b subsidies (Sec. 3102).

• Nuclear

  • Five-hundred million dollars are appropriated to subsidize two reactors and two-hundred fifty million dollars to subsidize four more reactors (Sec. 636).

• Vehicles and Fuels

  • Forty million dollars are appropriated for liquefied national gas (LNG), methanol or ethanol, and biodiesel fuels (Sec. 706); two-hundred million dollars for hybrid and hydrogen vehicles (Sec. 731); and one billion dollars for diesel fuel growth (Sec. 797); and $3,989m for the development of fossil energy (Sec. 961).

  • Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards shall be increased to thirty-five miles per gallon by the year 2020 (Sec. 502).

• Set America Free

  • Energy self sufficiency shall be achieved by 2025 within the three contiguous North American nation area of Canada, Mexico, and the U.S (Sec. 1422).

The Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act passed in the House of Representatives on January 18, 2007 (163-8) and in the Senate on June 21, 2007 (65-27). Differences are currently being resolved in the Conference Committee and then the bill will be delivered to the President.

President Bush has threatened to veto H.R. 6 if it contains price control language, which it does. The Administration also opposes the CAFÉ standards for medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks (K&L, Gates: 2007).²³

Even though the IPCC reports that transportation is only the lower end of the priorities, an economically beneficial mitigation policy is the modest goal of making the average car fleet thirty-five mpg by 2018. According a 2007 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, investing in the fuel economy would more than pay for itself, saving a net thirty-seven billion dollars in 2020 alone. It would also lead to over two-hundred forty-thousand more jobs across the county. CAFÉ’s contribution to the climate change problem is significant: in 2020, it would help cut national oil use by 1.6 million barrels per day (more than we currently import from Saudi Arabia) and would reduce emissions from cars and trucks by two hundred sixty million metric tons of carbon dioxide (equivalent to taking about forty million of today’s average cars and trucks off the road) (UCS: 2007).

U.S. Energy Policy Synopsis

The Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007 (H.R.3221 PCS), the America's Climate Security Act (S. 2191), and the Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act (H.R. 6) all have extremely important measures to deal with the global climate change problem.

Subsidies for bioenergy, fossil energy, and coal represent the powerful agricultural and oil lobbies that have unparalleled inside access to the decision making process. Organizations and businesses should increase lobbying efforts: there is a very large financial incentive! And without this critical input, the resulting legislation is guaranteed to be sub-optimal with respect to both cost efficiency, and mitigation and abatement effectiveness.

Subsidies (billions) in H.R. 3221 + S. 2191 + H.R. 6

3,682 fossil : 2.36 renewable energy and efficiency

Not only does Congress refuse to stop subsidizing GHGs, but they are making a serious error in transitioning from the greatest market failure in history with about one-trillion seven-hundred billion invested in big oil to investing over two trillion dollars invested in big agriculture. This should not be allowed to happen. Costs are almost guaranteed not to be internalized by the producers. Instead of investing so much into one industry, the Congress needs to create a more equitable and diverse portfolio of mitigation and abatement policies.

Nevertheless if these bills are passed they would significantly help achieve necessary global warming mitigation, although it will not help as much with adaptations. The bill has the potential to be better if prioritizations reflected an evaluation based on environmental costs and distributional effects. There needs be additional legislation to reflect the importance of energy efficiency, conservation, and behavior patters.

H.R. 3221 could, according to the Center for American Progress, cut GHG emissions by nearly twenty percent by 2030. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promoted the bill by remarking that “It reduces 10.4 billion tons of dioxide emissions—more than all of the cars in America.” The sponsors of S. 2191 released a statement saying that their bill would reduce emissions eighteen percent by 2020. This is significant legislation! If these projections are accurate, and aggregated, then the United States would achieve GHG stabilization by 2030, which the short-term goal advocated by the IPCC.

The biggest disappointment of this climate change legislation is the exclusion of a carbon tax that would fix large market failures. Implementing a carbon tax or a fuel tax would be politically difficult but the IPCC and many other organizations such as Resources for the Future see it as one of the best tools to reduce emissions. Taxes are identified by the IPCC as one of the most cost effective polices that a government could implement.

An important omission from H.R. 3221 is a policy concerning carbon sinks or conservation, the most cost effective abatement methods available according to the IPCC. The bill’s only forest related policy is about harvesting it for energy. S. 2191 does provide incentives for forest conservation through the cap and trade program, but additional regulations are needed.

Even though the urgency of these bills is great, only H.R. 6 is likely to become a law before February 2009.²⁴ President Bush is threatening to veto all three bills because the administration strongly opposes the “implicative” R&D bureaucracy and also opposes the addition of a narrow RPS for even just federal power generation. President Bush has also expressed opposition to the cap and trade policies of S. 2191.

With eighty-seven percent Republican opposition for H.R. 3221, and similar opposition to S. 2191 because it includes the even more controversial cap and trade policy, it is unlikely a veto will be overridden with a two-thirds majority (66/100 votes in the Senate and 288/437 in the House) (K&L, Gates: 2007). There is a greater possibility of Congress overriding a veto on H.R. 6 because there is support from sixty-five Senators but only one-hundred sixty-three Representatives.

Costs

One of the most contested areas of global climate change policy has to do with the high cost of mitigation and adaptation. In a world with many problems it is extremely important to prioritize where scarce resources should be appropriated. Unfortunately, the debate about the costs has been simplified to “it is too expensive” versus “it is too expensive not to”. Republican leaders and some academics who oppose these bills have two major complaints with this legislation: it is expensive and restricting.

An open letter from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that these bills will “limit access to valuable domestic oil and gas supplies while failing to produce any new energy.” The Chamber also urges members of Congress to oppose any amendments establishing a mandatory federal RPS. (U.S. Chamber of Commerce: 2007). ²⁵ It is expected that large businesses that are currently profiting from overly generous government welfare to oppose fixing the market failures on which their profits are dependent on. This legislation will necessarily hurt big business and conglomerates and benefit local and community business who do not have a lobby and whose voice is therefore greatly under-represented in this debate.

The claim that energy policies should not restrict energy use is based on unsound logic and/or science. The status quo is dangerously unsustainable and we are beginning to see a new paradigm that highlights the benefits of reduced consumption. These changes are expected to produce significant health and environmental benefits. The only way that someone could conclude that this energy transition should not occur is if they make a great mistake in not taking these benefits into account.

A properly funded global transition to clean energy can and should be a boon to the great majority in the world. A reform necessarily means addressing failures in governance that would free trillions of dollars for renewable energy investments and help quickly improve global equality (see chapter three). A shift away from consumerism and to a more ecological and politically active life has been empirically shown to improve the “ultimate currency” of happiness as well (Ben-Shahar: 2007).

Sustainable development involves increasing foreign aid to countries with problems of disease, malnutrition, sanitation, and also addressing problems of subsidies and trade barriers. These issues are of top priority for all international economists and politicians, as reported by the Copenheigan Consensus in the book Global Crisis, Global Solutions (Lomborg: 2001).

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) is one (among only a few) that claims investments in these development issues provide significantly greater benefits than investing in climate change mitigation and adaptation—that it is too expensive to reduce or slow global climate change. Global warming mitigation, according to the NCPA, would do little to prevent warming or future harms. “For a fraction of the costs, we could prevent much more harm and benefit many more people by adapting to a warmer world” (NCPA: 2007).

The ICPP report supports the claim that adaptation is cheaper, but it also reports that reducing consumption and using a large portfolio of both mitigation and adaptation policies are necessary. This approach would provide enormous benefits synergistic with the policies recommend the NPCA. My own critique of the three energy bills going through Congress is not that we should try to spend less, but that what we do spend should be used efficiently and effectively.

Likewise, the influential economist Bjorn Lomborg concludes in his 2007 global climate change analysis that reducing GHGs is “an expensive policy that will actually leave more people dead…At best, we can reduce damage only by 0.5 percent” (Lomborg, 59 & 114).²⁶

The first mistake these reports share is that they present a false choice between the Kyoto Protocol’s five percent GHG reduction and investments in developing nations suffering from disease, malnutrition, and sanitation. This is not a proper comparison because it ignores the IPCC’s recommendation of using a portfolio of policies that include Kyoto as just one, albeit important, policy synergistic with development aid.²⁷ Second, they are comparing a “Kyoto Forever” scenario that no expert has proposed. Focusing on the shortcomings of the Kyoto Protocol, especially considering it is meant to be a first small step, inflates the cost and is thus the preferred tactic when trying to prove how ineffective emission reductions can be.

President Bush, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Bjorn Lomborg, the NCPA, and others who have tried to frame the climate change challenge by focusing on the costs have ignored the fact that many mitigation policies would actually be economically beneficial. The use of cost-benefit analyses are being used irresponsibly by not taking into account important co-benefits. Nor are other factors such as non-linear events taken into consideration. Not addressing climate change as the most urgent issue facing the global civilization is likely to result from ignoring the geometric/exponential impacts of a number of potential tipping points—which is an inaccurate perception of reality. These oversights greatly diminish the quality of studies that conclude climate change mitigation and adoption is too expensive or unnecessary.

Paying the true cost of gasoline would result in paying over ten dollars per gallon of gas at the pump (Kimbrell: 1998). This is clearly not going to happen but is suggestive of how competitive renewable energy really is when externalities are internalized to fix this significant market failure. It is also suggestive of how out of tune with reality most Americans are: Americans pay an average of less than three dollars per gallon while Europeans pay over six dollars per gallon.

In calculating the true cost of gasoline, studies show external costs of about $1.7 trillion per year (Kimbrell: 1998). The government gives corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks, subsidies for extraction, production and use of petroleum, oversight, pollution cleanup, liability costs, and more than forty separate cost factors overall. The government is literally subsidizing GHG emissions and it needs to stop.

If distortionary fossil fuel subsidies were eliminated, the cost of renewable energy technologies would be much more competitive. Instead, the government, or more accurately, thirty senators have chosen to continue to subsidize both clean and dirty energy industries (see Moneyed Legislation section in Chapter 3).

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change

Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank Nicholas Stern published a report in 2006 about the economics of climate change policies called the Stern Review. Stern calculates that one percent of global GDP should be invested to mitigate climate change effects. A failure to do so could risk a recession on the scale of twenty percent of global GDP. This suggests the greatest market failure ever seen.

Stern’s analysis seems consistent and balanced compared to other forecasts. For example, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) has projected that climate damages will amount to one-hundred fifty billion dollars a year within this decade (with climate impacts costing the global economy about one-hundred fourty-five billion dollars in losses in 2004) and the world’s largest insurer, Munich Reinsurance, estimates losses amounting to three-hundred billion dollars a year within several decades. In 2002 Britain’s biggest insurer projected that, unchecked, climate change could bankrupt the global economy by 2065 (Gelbspan: 2004).

Future Climate Legislation

Global Carbon Tax

The least popular idea in politics and the most popular idea in economics is that if we want to cut emissions there needs to be a global tax on carbon. Taxes serve many functions: it raises revenue for government expenditures to fund public services and welfare, it can transfer wealth as a means of redistribution from the rich to the poor, and most important for climate change purposes, taxes are a way to address externalities by discouraging damaging behavior. A global carbon tax is an example of a pollution tax, also called a Pigovian tax, that would require little administration compared to a cap and trade system.

If the government places a tax of one dollar on a ton of GHGs, gasoline prices would go up about one cent a gallon. In a global macroeconomic model, the total present-day cost for a permanent one-dollar GHG tax is estimated to be at about three-hundred ninety million dollars per year (Lomborg: 2007). But the existence of secondary benefits are about the same order of magnitude as these costs, and studies conclude that an aggressive policy of GHG abatement with a twenty-five dollars per ton carbon tax is justified (IPCC: 2007; Ekins: 1996; Burtaw et.al.: 2001; Nordhaus: 2001).

On the very low end of cost analyses, Economist Bjorn Lomborg advocates, in his 2007 book Cool It, an initial global carbon tax around two dollars per ton, rising to about twenty-seven dollars at the end of the century. The total climatic impact, he reports, is to reduce the temperature increase by 0.2°F by the end of the century. And why did he choose this policy? Because “Uniquely, it costs about six-hundred billion dollars but creates twice that in benefits, meaning for each dollar it does two dollars of social good… Going much beyond the small optimal initiative is economically unjustified” (Lomborg, 36). Getting a double return on a tax should not be something that the public opposes. It would be irrational not to want this tax, unless of course you are profiting from fossil energy production, which is the case for the great majority of government representatives.

First, Lomborg’s conclusion is drastically different than the IPCC and many other economic experts’ recommendations of increasing carbon taxes up to at least fifty dollars per ton of CO₂-eq and as high as one-hundred twenty dollars per ton of CO₂-eq. Second, his justification is ill founded: he states that the “benefit comes centuries down the line” and therefore applies an inappropriately high discount rate to future benefits (Lomborg, 37).²⁸ The IPCC reports that mitigation policies such as a carbon tax would make noticeable differences before the end of this century.

Population

More attention should be given to population policies because achieving negative growth rates is an important policy goal for meeting GHG emission targets (Hamilton & Turton: 1999; Gaffin: 1998). The world population is about six-billion seven-hundred million and the growth rate is one and two-tenths percent and slightly declining (cia.gov: 2007). The link between increasing population and increasing GHGs is clear—the single greatest thing someone can do to limit their GHG is to not reproduce.

The United Nation projects the world population to be about nine to eleven billion people in 2050. Effective and expansive policies are needed to prevent the population from reaching this higher estimate. However, President Bush has continually denied about thirty-four million dollars per year to support the UN’s Population Fund (UNFPA) since 2002. The UNFPA estimates this would have been enough to prevent about two million unwanted pregnancies, forty-seven hundred maternal deaths, and more than seventy-thousand infant and child deaths per year. The U.S. should continue supporting the UNFPA as part of its climate and humanitarian policies.

Another important development in climate policy is to repeal the Mexico City Policy, better known as the Global Gag Rule. This rule states that non-governmental organizations that receive about four-hundred million dollars in U.S. aid can not use their own funds to impart medical counseling about or provide abortion services, petition their own government to liberalize restrictive abortion laws, or engage in public information initiatives or education measures about abortion (Population Connection: 2007).²⁹

Even within the U.S., reproductive education is limited to abstinence only and based on bad and misleading information. Congress should support the Responsible Education About Life Act (REAL) Act (H.R. 2553). This bill was introduced in May 2005 and previous sessions of congress. Its aim is “To provide for the reduction of adolescent pregnancy, HIV rates, and other sexually transmitted diseases, and for other purposes.”

The U.S.’s anti-education policies are coercive mechanisms that are not only exacerbating GHG pollution but are a human-rights violation.

Land Use

Former Arizona governor, Secretary of the Interior under President Clinton, and leader of the League of Conservation Voters, Bruce Babbitt advocates for a number of important land use policies in his book Cities in the Wilderness (2005). He argues for three major changes in American federal land use policy. These deserve special attention because land use conservation is one of the most important, yet overlooked, policies.

First, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) should be extended to protect critical ecosystems by applying before the fact of endangerment. The ESA has not been significantly amended since 1982 and it is past time to revise and update it. Babbitt writes “The act should be amended to contain a broad mandate to identify and protect landscapes and watersheds and critical ecosystems, whether or not an endangered
species happens to be in the neighborhood at a particular time” (Babbitt, 92).

Babbitt suggests revising the ESA to require a larger role of states and local governments, beginning with statutory standards defining open space (similar to laws in Arizona and Massachusetts). Federal grants could be used as an incentive for:

“states to employ a range of tools, including zoning, density transfers, land exchanges, mitigation credits, protective agricultural zoning, proper planning of highway and infrastructure programs, and purchases or donations of land or conservation easements to create significant protected landscapes” (Babbitt, 94).

A revised ESA should also include sanctions involving the Environmental Protection Agency authorization to withhold federal highway funds from states or cities that fail to adopt and enforce an effective program.

Second, because the U.S. will be required to begin dismantling production subsidies for farms of about fifteen billion dollars per year, there is “an unprecedented opportunity to redirect this money to permanent retirement of marginal farmlands and to restore a network of forested riparian corridors across the land” (Babbitt, 8). The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) should be changed in three ways:

First, designated lands will be retired for permanent prairie and watershed restoration.  Second, close and seal the loophole that allows farmers to collect CRP payments on one portion of their land while simultaneously plowing up new land.  Third, and probably the greatest need of change, is the CRP's failure to define restoration objectives that will clearly identify lands to be taken out of production and dedicated to restoration (Babbitt, 112).

The process of defining objectives and drawing maps should be expanded into a collaborative federal-state-landowner process. Farm aid should always be conditioned on participation in restoration programs.

The third land use policy change that Babbitt advances is to change the Federal Water Power Act of 1920 that involves a licensing requirement that can help mitigate or reduce impacts on fish and wildlife. The change should make the same requirement for dams operated by the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other
federal agencies (Babbitt, 141). Dams provide important services, including hydroelectric power that consists of about fifty percent of the U.S. renewable energy and six and a half percent of total electricity, but dams are also a threat to wildlife and many are in bad condition (EIA: 2006).

Land conservation is going to be one of the most important policies in climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, there is very likely going to be conflict over land conservation and food and bioenergy production. As Jacques Leslie writes in Deep Water: The Epic Struggle over Damns, Displaced People, and the Environment (2005), “The battle over dams is at the core of conflicts throughout the world involving water scarcity, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, development and globalization, social justice, the survival of indigenous peoples, and the growing gap between the rich and the poor.”

Congress should implement land use conservation changes as soon as possible and prepare to make difficult trade-offs where the best policy (conservation) will almost certainly be in conflict with the represented policy (energy production). Unfortunately, the right decision will unlikely be made without significant increases in public pressure.

GDP v. Quality of Life

The problem with using gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of development is that it does not include various non-market activities and social ills such as environmental pollution. It is incompatible with a change in focus from growth to sustainability. Instead of focusing on GDP as the primary indicator of success and advancing the public welfare, the government should focus on increasing people’s quality of life. This is, after all, the end of government.

Recent economic studies have developed a number of means to objectively determine a country’s quality of life that could be used as a model for government policies in trying to prioritize what to focus on. For example, The Economist magazine has established a Quality of Life Index based on a number of indicators, including: GDP-purchasing power parity,³⁰ life expectancy at birth, political stability and security ratings, divorce rate, church attendance or trade-union membership to determine “community life”, latitude (climate), unemployment rate, indices of political and civil liberties, and the ratio of average male and female earnings. The United States ranks twelfth, with negative scores in political stability (-37.3%), family life (-32.6%), and health (-4.7%) and the highest scores in material wellbeing (32.1%) and community life (23.2%).

Using a quality of life (QOL) index rather than GDP makes it possible to increase the “wealth” of society by focusing on addressing governance reform, the “severe erosion of community and family life,” and health care reform (The Economist: 2007). Improving these three quality indicators is extremely important to, and synergistic with, GHG mitigation and abatement.

AmeriCorps

The AmeriCorps is the largest government-funded domestic volunteer service organization, with about four-hundred thirty-five million dollars per year in funding. This program should be given increased support because it can help build local communities through an institutional approach that emphasizes building organizational capacity and inter-organization cooperation (Thomson & Perry: 1998; Perry, et. al: 1999). The AmeriCorps goals include satisfying unmet social needs, enhancing the civic ethic, and reinvigorating lethargic bureaucracies.

From 1994 to 2006 AmeriCorps has involved four-hundred thousand citizens serving the nation by working with more than two-thousand five-hundred nonprofit and faith-based organizations (Dorsey & Galinsky, 48).³¹ President Bush said he would like to see “every American to commit at least two years, four-thousand hours over the rest of your lifetime, to the service of your neighbors and your nation” (PBS: 2003). The reason the President Bush and others recommend public service is that studies have shown that “Most schools with service-learning [thirty-two percent of all public schools] cited strengthening relationships among students, the school, and the community as key reasons for practicing service-learning” (Skinner & Chapman: 1999).³²

In July 2003 the House of Representatives voted for a proposed amendment which would have cut twelve million dollars in the bill for AmeriCorps. The motion failed because “AmeriCorps volunteers play an invaluable role in providing important services and support for the least-advantaged citizens in the U.S. as well as impoverished individuals living abroad” (Progressive Punch: 2004).

AmeriCorps is one of the best institutional organizations the U.S. has to address economic inequality, build community leadership, and make many other positive contributions to society (Perry, et. al: 1999). It is also one of the best programs for the United States to address GHG neutrality from a top-down approach that is manifested as a bottom-up effort. The IPCC reports that enhancing decentralized decision making processes and equitable participation are vital to effective GHG mitigation.

The AmeriCorps should offer grants to high school youth (typically fifteen to eighteen years old) to become engaged in community energy awareness campaigns. The AmeriCorps should also target appropriations to organizations and businesses that provide cheap home energy audits or weatherization services to improve energy efficiency.

Conclusion

There has been very limited federal action to deal with the problem of climate change until this year. The U.S. is now experiencing a revolutionary change in its energy policy with the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007 (H.R. 3221), the America’s Climate Security Act (S. 2191), and the Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act (H.R. 6). These bills offer a number of great policies:

• Cap and Trade program with auctioned permits involving a 70 percent reduction in GHG emissions covered by the permits (80%) between 2012 and 2050 (S. 2191).

• 35 mpg CAFÉ standard by 2020 (H.R. 6).

• 15 percent renewable portfolio standard (RPS) (H.R. 3221).

• Improve efficiency by at least 2.5 percent per year by 2012.

• Incentives ($1b) for weatherization (H.R. 6).

• Incentives ($345m) for efficiency improvements, worker training programs, and non-profits (H.R. 3221).

• Incentives ($235m+) for solar energy (H.R. 3221).

• Targeting 2.5 percent biodiesel, 5 percent biogas, and over 10 percent ethanol blends (H.R. 3221).

Putting a price on carbon with a cap and trade system is significantly inferior to a tax and should not be considered a substitute. It is about putting a price tag on carbon in the Earth's atmosphere in the relentless search for new profit frontiers in the public domain--which can be seen from Europe's failed attempt at pricing caron that resulted in enormous profits in the fossil sector. -Erik Phillips-Nania 1/19/08

Unfortunately, these bills also include a number of provisions that should be changed or included in future legislation. The optimal policies are not being established, in large part because small businesses and communities are under represented in the policy process. Congress should consider the following:

• Subsidize energy service companies (ESCOs) at least $500 billion.

• Create a GHG tax.

• Include carbon dioxide sinks with forest and soil conservation.

• Prioritize energy efficiency and then energy supply (H.R. 3221).

• Do not subsidize bioenergy over $2 trillion (H.R. 3221).

• Do not subsidize fossil energy $4b (H.R. 6).

• Do not subsidize coal $1.8 billion (H.R. 6).

Benefits of these policies are expected to include global equity, better governance, and even more happiness.³³

Cost-benefit analyses used to justify not using a GHG tax or other regulatory polices have made two severe mistakes: (1) comparing a Kyoto forever policy, instead of a comprehensive portfolio, against a policy that emphasizes development—which is synergistic and one of the most important climate policies, and (2) ignoring catastrophic tipping points, leading to an inaccurate perception of reality. These two mistakes consistently lead to climate change policies with inflated costs, which also happens when environmental and health co-benefits are not included.

I have suggested five possible policies that might not be considered as part of a comprehensive climate change policy. The first is a global carbon tax that is meant to fix market failures (caused primarily by distortionary subsidies). Second, there needs to be negative world population growth as soon as possible (compared to the current rate of one and two-tenths percent growth per year). Policies that are necessary to address this include a repeal of the Global Gag Rule, funding for the UN’s Population Fund, and the REAL Act. The third set of policies I suggest are land use recommendations from Bruce Babbitt. Legislation should update the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Water Power Act of 1920, and funding for the Conservation Reserve Program.

The fourth change in policy has to do with using different indicators that place less emphasis on production and more emphasis on sustainable development. Instead of measuring development with gross domestic product (GDP), countries should use a Quality of Life Index. The ramification of this in the U.S. would be more emphasis on governance reform, family and community support, and health care reform.

My final recommendation is for Congress to increase its support for the AmeriCorps. The AmeriCorps should focus on funding programs that engage youth in awareness campaigns related to behavioral patters and also programs that provide home efficiency audits and weatherization services. The AmeriCorps’ greatest advantage is in its decentralized nature and equitable participation.

There is a chance that H.R. 3221 and S. 2191 will not be deliberated on until after the November 2008 elections. Regardless, there is a window of opportunity that will last until at least January 2008 for H.R. 3221 and April 2008 for S. 2191, and there is a likelihood this window will stay open until July 2008 because of partisan politics.

The window of opportunity for organizations and businesses and individuals to lobby for the REAL act, and updates to the Endangered Species Act and the Federal Water Powers Act is dependent on external circumstances that focus the public’s attention on issues related to this legislation. Nevertheless, support at any time would be productive.

Public input in this process could help bring about more support, better policies, and increased public awareness. Because of the importance of this energy transition and the stakes involved it is important that the government does not establish policies based on bad information or input only from big businesses.

Effective lobbying for any of these necessary reforms could involve personally contacting your representative by phone, e-mail or video broadcast, writing to local newspapers about its importance, and/or joining online petitions,.³⁴

The climate policy currently being debated will affect billions of people. Nonprofit organizations and states especially have an incentive to lobby for this bill because this is where federal money will most likely flow. Incentives for individuals to lobby include better future home energy efficiency and renewable energy rebates, a cleaner and healthier environment, reduced risk of catastrophic events, personal security, global equity (reduced suffering), and a better world for the next generations.

It is the elite (big oil, big media, Bush’s cronies, those thirty-five senators who voted against H.R. 6, etc) who are pointing out the costs to the exclusion of important benefits because they are the ones who will be most disadvantaged from a shift in global equity. These people have significant power in terms of inside connections to the policy process and financial resources, but they are in the minority and should not be allowed to maintain the status quo at the peril of the ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world.

PART II

Reforms in American Governance

Chapter Three

Corruption and Power Imbalance

Failures in American governance are central to the global climate change problem. American leadership in this energy transition is critical, but a number of problems are delaying this: institutional corruption, public ignorance, and the imbalance of power are the primary causes of this political crisis.

The framers of the Constitution recognized the importance of checks and balances, which is why Madison’s Federalist 51 is such an important essay. Preventing the executive from becoming tyrannical was, at the time of America’s founding, one of the primary concerns. The tendency for a federalist republic (which is what America’s government is defined as) to become corrupt was not as important initially but over the years Madison’s insight about the potential violence of factions in Federalist 10 has become equally important.³⁵ In reality, the tyranny of the executive and the violence of faction are both important components of American political crisis.

Another debate that went on during America’s founding was about the merits of a republic being founded upon a sense of “republican virtue.” This behavioral disposition toward public consciousness on the part citizens was the norm at the time of the American founding, but its maintenance has not been sustained across the fourteen generations since America’s founding in 1776. Discussions of the attitudes antithetical to virtue help define the concept: republics in decline are composed of citizens who are “steeped in luxury,” “fawning,” “submissive,” or “timid” (Abbott, 51).

Failures in Congress are the most worrisome because Congress is the first branch of government, empowered and framed in the first article of the Constitution. “The framers wanted it clear that Congress was to be the first among equals of the three branches: it is clear, when push comes to shove, that Congress can trump the other two branches by overriding a presidential veto, impeaching and removing from office presidents and justices alike, and by changing the size or jurisdiction of the courts. Congress is seen as a powerful, independent body expected to represent a large and diverse republic, to deliberate on important policy questions, and to check and balance the other branches” (Mann & Ornstein: 14).

The American government, specifically the Congressional branch, has clearly demonstrated their inability to fulfill their established duty to society. Corrupt members of Congress have been preventing progressive climate change legislation, in large part because of powerful moneyed interests.³⁶ This power imbalance is in conflict with Congress’ duty to American citizens, and to our posterity, because it has obstructed and demoted the security of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Destructive of these fundamental ends, elected representatives are adding the public’s money to their own campaigning coffers (on the scale of hundreds of millions of dollars per election cycle), giving the public’s money to wealthy interests with record profits at the expense of the least wealthy in society (on the scale of trillions of dollars), and producing policies without compromise or consensus. Widespread corruption and a misuse of authority have effectively undermined our government’s ability to secure the public’s fundamental rights. These developments have placed a great strain on the legitimacy of the American government.

Members of Congress who are in violation of the citizen-state compact must be held accountable and punished. Under the Constitution, members of both Houses enjoy the privilege of being free from arrest in all cases, except for treason (disloyalty to one’s nation), felony (including embezzlement and grand theft), and breach of the peace (a deliberately vague legal term that might be invoked under current circumstances). Representatives are, in fact, being sentenced to prison at an alarming rate.³⁷ However, with lax monitoring and little formal or informal punishments, many are not being punished, those being punished are given sentences disproportionately soft compared to their crime, and acts that are technically legal but in direct violation of the basic citizen-state compact are being overlooked (like laundering the public’s money into their campaign coffers or to their family members).

According to Martin Garbus, a well-respected and successful trial lawyer in the U.S., no American government “has been so criticized and seen as so radical and dangerous to the rest of the world” (Garbus: 29). Corporate powers’ influence on the policy stream is completely off-balance to the detriment of society; the need for change is compelling and urgent. Support for Congress is at a near all-time low with only eighteen percent approval in August 2007 (Saad: 2007). The Gallup News Service reports that Congress’ approval rating is “highly anemic, still registering on the extremely low end of the historical range of Gallup approval scores dating back to 1974” (Saad: 2007).

Congress has abdicated their responsibility as party and ideology trump institution (Mann & Ornstein: 2006). There have been unprecedented breaches of Congressional practice and ethics amounting to a gross abuse of power representing trillions of dollars of wasted public money. The following is, in the classic vocabulary of the Declaration of Independence, an overview of a long train of abuses and usurpations, and an abridged history of repeated injuries.

Fiscal Insanity

Budget debates in Washington are unrealistic and are costing the American public substantially. A Wharton School professor, testifying to Congress, said, “current federal budgetary practices would be illegal in the private sector.” The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO’s) David M Walker, in response to the 2005 Financial Report of the United States concluded:

A significant number of material weaknesses related to financial systems, fundamental record keeping and financial reporting, and incomplete documentation continued to (1) hamper the federal government’s ability to reliably report a significant portion of its assets, liabilities, costs, and other related information, (2) affect the federal government’s ability to reliably measure the full costs as well as the financial and non-financial performance of certain programs and activities, …(4) hinder the federal government from having reliable financial information to operate in an economically, efficient, and effective manner.

The government made thirty-six billion dollars in improper payments in 2005 and over twenty billion dollars could not be accounted for—completely lost. To put this amount of money in perspective, a state-of-the-art high school can cost seventy-five million dollars; twenty billion dollars would buy two-hundred sixty-six of them. A major hospital expansion and upgrade can cost about one-hundred million dollars; twenty billion dollars would get you two-hundred of those.

According to the 2005 Financial Report of the United States, the 2005 deficit was seven-hundred sixty billion dollars, not the three-hundred eighteen billion dollars usually reported.³⁸ The deficit is over six percent GDP and rising, not less than three percent and shrinking as usually reported. America’s debts and commitments are forty-nine trillion dollars (including Social Security and Medicare commitments), not eight-trillion eight-hundred billion dollars (June 2007) as usually reported. In 2000, America’s debt totaled twenty trillion dollars but it has more than doubled in the proceeding five years. House Budget Committee member Jim Cooper said that “During the last five years, President Bush has borrowed more money abroad than all previous American Presidents combined.”³⁹

In 2005 the Bush administration, according to Cooper, borrowed one-hundred seventy-three billion dollars from Social Security and one-hundred eighty billion dollars in 2006. Doing so makes the true federal deficit in 2005 five-hundred seventy billion dollars, not three-hundred eighteen billion dollars. Including the increases in Social Security and Medicare promises, the 2005 deficit increases to three and one-third trillion dollars (equal to China’s and India’s combined GNP) (Cooper: xxv).

George W. Bush has transformed a $5.6 trillion ten-year Bill Clinton surplus into a $5 trillion deficit—a $10.6 trillion shift in wealth from our national treasury into the pockets of the wealthiest Americans, particularly the President’s corporate paymasters. Any discerning observer must acknowledge that the White House has repeatedly lied to the American people about critical policy issues—Medicare, education, the environment, the budget implications of its tax breaks, and the war in Iraq—with catastrophic results. Generations of Americans will pay for the Republican campaign debt to the energy industry and other big polluters with global instability, depleted national coffers, and increased vulnerability to oil-market price shocks. They will also pay with reduced prosperity and quality of life at home. The administration’s attacks on science and the law have put something perhaps even greater at risk—our values and our democracy. (Kennedy: 2005)

America’s financial situation, though difficult to comprehend because of its scale, has been hidden from the public. These records, amounting to an unprecedented breach of government responsibility, illustrate Congress’ inability to be trusted in controlling the U.S. purse—which is their primary function.

Dysfunction

Approximately “1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes,” which are used to overcome filibusters, noted a July 2007 McClatchy report. "If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes—fifty-eight each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002." In first seven months of the 110^th Congress, the Senate has held forty-two cloture votes aimed at ending debate. Filibusters, or usually only the threat of one, have resulted in the Democrats falling short twenty-two times in trying to deliver on their campaign promises.

In 2007 Republicans have blocked votes on major legislation dealing with energy, labor rights, and prescription drugs. Senator McCaskill (D-MO) remarked “The minority party has decided we have to get to sixty votes on almost everything we vote on of substance. That’s not the way this place is supposed to work.” Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss.) complained that “the Senate is spiraling into the ground to a degree that I have never seen before, and I’ve been here [since 1973]. All modicum of courtesy is going out the window” (Talev: 2007).

Filibusters are a common, if controversial, tool used by the minority party. This Congress is taking it to a new level and the result is more polarized politics. Filibusters used to be infrequent, partly because of the custom of civility. At three fifths, or sixty votes, it is seven votes short of the two-thirds needed to override a presidential veto.

Misuse of Authority: Buying Power

Individual legislators are stealing the public’s money: House Representative Alan Mollohan (D-WV, unopposed in an election since 1986, on the Appropriations Committee) has increased his personal wealth from five-hundred thousand dollars in 2000 to eight million dollars in 2005, in part by earmarking two-hundred fifty million dollars for five nonprofit organizations that he created (Morris: 8, 148 & BeyondDeLay.org). Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL, in office 1987-2007), while earmarking two-hundred seven million dollars, profited two million dollars in land sales directly related to his earmarks (Morris: 143). These examples highlight the flow of money from public taxes into our “representative’s” pockets. Individuals running government sponsored enterprises are also stealing public money: Fannie Mae’s CEO Franklin Delano Raines has illegally profited ninety million dollars in six years (Morris: 220).⁴⁰

Comparing America to the fall of Rome, historian Cullen Murphy observes that public transactions are increasingly requiring the payment of money, and the pursuit of money and personal advancement is becoming the purpose of public jobs—which of course themselves cost money to acquire (Murphy: 97). This is a serious problem in a representative democracy in which representatives are supposed to be enlarging and refining the public’s interest.

Big money interests are overriding the democratic process and are paying legislators for access to the policy stream: in the House of Representatives, in one year, Rick Santorum (R-PA, 1995-2007) received over one million one-hundred thousand dollars, Arlen Specter (R-PA, 1981-present) one million dollars, and Harry Reid (D-NV, 1987-present) eight-hundred ninety thousand dollars. In one year of the Senate, Dennis Hastert received nine-hundred twenty-nine thousand dollars, John Murtha (D-PA, 1974-present) eight-hundred sixty-nine thousand dollars, and Jerry Lewis (R-CA, 1979-present) eight-hundred nineteen thousand dollars. These contributions significantly increase the security of their job and make the politicians responsive to their special interest donors more than their constituents.

Legislators are appropriating themselves money for campaigning through business intermediaries: Roy Blunt (R-MO, 1997-present) received two-hundred seventy thousand dollars and James Oberstar (D-MN, 1975-present) received over one-hundred sixty-five thousand dollars from transportation PACS while on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (Moris: 126). This is a rampant practice across Congress with very few exceptions.

Comparing the U.S. to the fall of Rome again, Murphy notes that the legislative institution is corroding: people must pay before officials will act and payment also determines how they will act (Murphy: 98). Just by passing the Bankruptcy Bill, Tom Carper (D-DE, serving 1983-1993 and 2001-present on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs) received two-hundred ninety-eight thousand dollars, Tim Johnson (D-SD, 1997-present) two-hundred twenty-eight thousand dollars, and Evan Bayh (D-IN, 1999-present) two-hundred thousand dollars.

Another example of injustice is how profits to individual legislators for cutting student loans thirteen billion dollars amounted to fifty-two million dollars in benefits to legislators in 2005-2006 (Morris, 258). It is quite apparent who the winners and losers are.

Moneyed Legislation

When the Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act (H.R.6).was going through the Senate in 2007, an amendment was proposed to establish economic incentives for the development of clean, alternative energy technologies, and close loopholes for big oil. But the oil lobby fought hard and got thirty-five senators to vote against the amendment. These senators have received an average of three times, or $161,382 in contributions from the oil and gas industry between 2002 and 2007. The fifty-eight senators voting in favor of the amendment received an average of $56,942 over the same period (CAP: 2007a). Thanks to these thirty-five senators, the progressive tax package fell two votes short of the super majority it needed to overcome a filibuster and H.R. 6 now contains $5.8b in fossil energy subsides.

In the House of Representatives, big oil’s twenty-nine million dollars in campaign contributions between 1989 and 2006 is a trivial investment compared to the sixteen billion dollars per year tax loopholes and royalty relief that the big oil companies are trying to maintain (Weiss & Wingate: 2007). The one-hundred eighty-nine representatives who voted against the H.R. 6 bill received an average of $109,277 in contributions from the oil and gas industry between 1989 and 2006. The two-hundred twenty-one representatives that voted for the tax package received an average of $26,277 over the same period (Weiss & Wingate: 2007). The Center for American Progress said that given its nearly thirty-seven and a half million dollars in direct campaign contributions to House and Senate representatives, “it is unsurprising that when big oil knocks, enough senators answer the call to thwart the will of a majority of their colleagues” (Weiss: 2007).

Since 1990, eighty million dollars of checkbook diplomacy between the automobile industry and Washington has dulled America’s political commitment to fuel efficiency and bought Detroit political connections that rival those of big oil (NRDC: 2002). The energy industry donated one and a half million dollars for Bush’s campaigns from 1993 to 1998, forty-eight million dollars to Bush and the Republican Party in 2000 and another fifty-eight million dollars since the President’s inauguration (Kennedy, 96). The administration’s environmental policies and opposition to the CAFÉ standards clearly represent the interests of their corporate supporters.

Subsidies

Unnecessary subsidizing of industries is a wasteful practice that gives politicians extra campaigning money and obligates taxpayers spend upwards of $1.37 million annually per job saved (Morris, 295). An example of inequitable subsidization is the sugar industry: protecting the sugar industry saves 2,261 jobs and costs $1.87 billion, resulting in $826,000 annual cost per job saved. This hurts the poorest of our neighbors to the south while the industry makes four-hundred million dollars of profits from the higher prices they can charge. The sugar industry then donates $2.48 million to members of Congress (in 2004) (Morris: 2007).

Congress is subsidizing the oil industry about $16 trillion, maritime services $2.5 trillion, the sugar industry $1.8 trillion, the dairy industry $1.6 trillion, $746 million for machine tools, and subsidize at least thirteen other industries over one-hundred million dollars. Three industries are costing over one million dollars per job saved and seven industries are subsidized over five-hundred thousand dollars per job saved (Morris: 2007).

Corporate welfare should be reevaluated in light of climate policy developments. The worst subsidies here are probably that for the sugar and dairy industry because of their unsustainable business practices, negative environmental and health externalities, direct competition for land conservation, and inequitable distributional effects. If the U.S. wants to reduce GHGs then subsidies should not be promoting consumption, but conservation.

Corruption in Contracts

Selling products and services to the federal government represents about three percent of GDP. Contracts account for nearly forty percent ($377 billion) of all discretionary spending in fiscal year 2005. Between 2000 and 2005, total federal contracting increased by nearly one-hundred seventy-five billion dollars, or eighty-seven percent. A lack of transparency and accountability has led to significant abuse. Widespread contract corruption involving tens of billions of dollars are undermining the quality of key government services, from the protection of public health and the flow of commerce to the preservation of our national security. Non-competitive contracting has more than doubled during the first half of this decade, and during the last three years more than five federal officials have been convicted of crimes involving federal contracting (Lilly: 2007).

Congress needs to closely monitor and limit the use of non-competitive contracts. Two examples reveal the cronyism and fraud in government procurement: executives at the dysfunctional Transportation Security Administration (TSA) awarded themselves $1.5 million in year-end bonuses and Boeing has received at least forty-nine million dollars in “extra profits,” according to former Secretary Tom Ridge, for a contract to oversee Department of Homeland Security contracts (Lilly: 2007).

Congress has the responsibility to ensure that the money provided to the executive branch is effectively spent. The Center for American Progress, in a report about the problems with contracts, concludes: “clearly the Congress has failed almost completely in its willingness and capacity to perform the constitutional function of insuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the government that it has funded” (Lilly: 2007).

Holding the Executive to Account

In his 2005 critique of the Bush Administration, Robert Kennedy Jr. writes in Crimes Against Nature that the administration “has sacrificed respect for the law, private property rights, scientific integrity, public health, long-term economic vitality, and commonsense governance” in the pursuit of private profit and personal power. As a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Kennedy exposes the numerous ways in which our government has abandoned its duty to safeguard our health—an abandonment of democratic precedent amounting to fascism.⁴¹

The White House has relied on deception to gain approval for radically new policies even though President Bush had analyses from reputable sources that directly contradict what he was telling the American people. In 2003, the U.S. News & World Report had this to say: “The Bush administration has quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government, cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety and environmental matters.” As long as the government’s actions are secret, it cannot be held accountable.

There is an unwillingness to conduct tough oversight of executive programs or assert congressional prerogatives vis-à-vis the presidency on matters ranging from the accessibility of critical information to war-making (Mann & Ornstein: 9). This has been particularly detrimental to the international order and the rule of law.

Congress should impeach President Bush for (1) unlawful complacency in torture, (2) unlawful use of force in Iraq, (3) unlawful signing statements and (4) not faithfully executing laws, as mandated by the Constitution.

Complicit in Torture

Congress has failed to hold President Bush accountable for blatantly ignoring well-established laws. Prisoners at Guantanamo could be sentenced to death without a public trial, the presumption of innocence, a right to appeal, or even proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt (Sands: 156). The international humanitarian laws violated include the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 75 of the 1949 Geneva Convention III (which is customary international law), and the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which provides that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”).

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 (S. 3930) even encourages torture. It states that confessions obtained during torture may be used against the victim in their legal proceedings (Garbus: 43).

According to media reports and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), President Bush signed an order giving new powers to the CIA, authorizing it to set up a series of detention facilities outside the U.S. and to question those held in them with “unprecedented harshness.” Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba was established as a place to gather information beyond the constraints of international and U.S. law (Sands: 210).

The notion that the president has the constitutional power to permit torture is like saying he has the constitutional power to commit genocide (Sands: 215). But according to the ACLU and TomDispatch.com, at least twenty-one detainees have been tortured to death during interrogation by Navy SEALs and other government agencies—actions almost certainly authorized by Vice President Cheney (ACLU: 2005 & Jamail: 2006).

An August 1, 2002, memorandum “Re: Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. 2340-2340A,” from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel authorized the CIA to conduct more aggressive interrogations than were permitted prior to September 11, 2001. This memo can be found via a Washington Post (13 June 2004) article Justice Dept. Memo Says Torture ‘May be Justified’.⁴²

Laws violated include the 1984 Convention against Torture, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 7), the American Convention on Human Rights (Article 5[2]), the 1949 Geneva Convention III, Geneva Convention IV, Geneva Protocol I, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—all of which America is party to and many of which America helped establish. Taken together, the rules prohibiting torture and criminalizing terrorism allow no exceptions. The rationale is simple: torture is morally wrong. And according to the U.S. Army’s Field Manual, it is a poor technique that leads to unreliable results (Patraeus: 2007).

If George W. Bush or Richard Cheney is considered complicit in cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment, they must be punished under criminal law—crimes punishable by death.⁴³ But Congress has failed to check and balance the executive and have subordinated their role in government to an unacceptable level.

Congress is currently in the process of pardoning (freeing from future prosecution) President Bush and his administration for violating the Geneva Conventions. Buried deep inside the War Crimes Detainee bill (H.R. 6166 & S. 3930), which was passed by the House September 27, 2007, is a provision that would pardon President Bush and his administration for violation of the Geneva conventions.⁴⁴ The War Crimes Detainee bill still needs to be voted on in the Senate, and public and media pressure before February 2008 is essential to prevent this from passing.

Unlawful Use of Force

Congress has failed to hold President Bush accountable for unlawful use of force in Iraq, an undeclared war that amounts to the crime of aggression (Sands: 189). Since the United Nations (UN) Charter was adopted it can no longer be argued that the use of force is beyond the rules of international law. The U.S. ignored the Security Council and the U.S.’s interpretation of UN Resolution 1441 has been recognized as absurd (Sands: 191-192). ⁴⁵ The Iraq War will make it more difficult to act when there is a real threat—a time when unity is needed to address real challenges. The failure of Congressional oversight has resulted in actions that have undermined public trust in the intelligence services and in governance (Sands: 203).

Signing Statements

President Bush has been largely unnoticed in using signing statements to nullify laws passed by Congress. The problem is that Bush is using signing statements like line item vetoes. Yet the Supreme Court has declared line item vetoes as unconstitutional in 1988, in the case of Clinton v. New York. According to Phillip Cooper (2005), a leading expert on signing statements, President Bush is rewriting the laws by reinterpreting how the law will be implemented. Cooper judges this action to be “excessive, unhelpful, and needlessly confrontational.”

Cooper has accounted for George W. Bush issuing twenty-three signing statements in 2001 and thirty-four statements in 2002 by raising one-hundred sixty-eight constitutional objections; twenty-seven statements in 2003, raising one-hundred forty-two constitutional challenges, and twenty-three statements in 2004, raising one-hundred seventy-five constitutional criticisms. In total, during his first term Bush raised a remarkable five-hundred and five constitutional challenges to various provisions of legislation that became law.

While only vetoing two bills, he has nullified over five-hundred specific parts of bills he has found unconstitutional. However, in the spirit of the Presentment Clause, the president ought to veto the entire bill, not sign it with reservations in a way that attempts to veto part of the bill. ⁴⁶ But this is exactly what President Bush is doing. He is acting as if Congress were a mere advisor (Dean: 2006).

President Bush’s signing statements are also in conflict with the Constitutional implication that a veto is the President’s only avenue to prevent a bill’s becoming a law. It is also in direct violation of Article 2, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution which says the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Former Counsel to the President of the U.S. in 1970 and Richard Nixon’s White House lawyer, John Dean (2006) writes:

It is amazing that Bush believes he can ignore a law, and protect himself, through a signing statement… Congress wanted to impeach Nixon for impounding money he thought should not be spent. Telling Congress its laws do not apply makes Nixon's impounding look like cooperation with Congress, by comparison….In short, Bush's signing statements, which are now going over the top, are going to cause a Congressional reaction. It is inevitable.

President Bush has used an executive order (#13233: 1 November 2001) to ensure that the records of his most secretive administration remain hidden indefinitely. The Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007 (H.R. 1255) would lift this shroud of secrecy from presidential records. The bill, which was introduced by Congressman Henry Waxman passed the House by a vote of three-hundred thirty-three to ninety-three in March 2007. The current status of the bill (as of October 2007) is that Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) objects to moving it forward in the Senate (ThinkProgress.org: 2007).

The public has an obligation to pressure the Senate to pass The Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007—it is a matter of international human rights. Passing this act could be the start of Congress regaining their prominence and holding President Bush in check by increasing transparency.

Action Agenda: Government Reform

The United States government’s legitimacy is being undermined for a wide variety of reasons. The culture of corruption needs to change to prevent such massive waste and unacceptable violations. These changes are not only synergistic with, but are also necessary for achieving GHG neutrality. Corruption is rampant because of sub-optimal accountability, a severe lack of oversight, non-competitive contracts, money laundering for campaigns, personal gain through business intermediaries, and the use distortionary subsidies that appropriate funds inequitably and fuel big money interests. These failures have resulted in the largest market failure ever and trillions of dollars of wasted public money. It is no wonder The Economist magazine’s Quality of Life Index (2005) reduces the U.S. score 37.3 percent for bad governance.

The following is a review of the recommendations made by Thomas E. Mann, Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution and Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Their recommendations are derived in part from legislation previously introduced. These suggestions can be found in Mann and Ornstein’s book The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How To Get It Back On Track (2006, p.226-241). I have also included recommendations from the Center for American Progress, Citizens Against Government Waste, a variety of academic journals, and will conclude this section with a number of bills being considered by Congress at this time.

Near the top of the list for addressing institutional failure is dealing with the problem of redistricting, commonly known as gerrymandering. The focus should be on establishing an independent commission with redistricting authority in each state, such as in Arizona and Washington. The purpose is to prevent representatives from drawing partisan districts that help secure the representative’s chance of re-election.⁴⁷

Also near the top of the list is a change in Congress’ schedule to help create real debate and discussions on the floor of each chamber. Mann and Ornstein suggest going two weeks on and two weeks off, with the two weeks on beginning early Monday morning and going to late Friday afternoon—in other words, a typical work week and not the four day schedule that has become the norm. (An alternative would be to make at least twenty-six weeks a year five-day weeks in Washington.) That kind of schedule change may should trivial, but it is not. If members were at the Capitol for extended periods, including the weekends in between the “on” weeks, they would interact with each other more frequently and more directly, including across party lines, developing interpersonal relationships that are now often nonexistent. Most importantly, full weeks in Washington would provide Congress to do extended legislating.

Schedule changes should be combined with rules changes that would enforce deliberation and restore regular order. Every bill should have a period of at least twenty-four hours, but preferable three days from the time it is reported to the time it is debated on the floor, so that lawmakers know what they are voting on. No vote in the House should last more than twenty minutes unless both party leaders and both party floor managers consent (Mann & Ornstein: 2006; Podesta & Lilly: 2007). Conference committees should not exclude any conference members; nor should they be able to include provisions never considered in either house, eliminate provisions included in identical form by both houses, or add provisions after conferees have signed off on the final product (Podesta & Lilly: 2007).

On the second tier of priorities, Mann and Ornstein suggest reducing harmful and pervasive earmarks. Earmarks, or “pork,” are a line-item appropriation that designates fund for a specific purpose. The 2007 budget had sixty-four billion dollars earmarked for 12,852 items. It is seen as a problem because it advances the careers of Washington insiders rather than being based on the merit of the project. “Waste and abuse have proliferated in the absence of transparency, accountability, and a competitive process” (Finnigan: 2006).

Mann and Ornstein suggest that every lawmaker be required to disclose when he or she has a direct interest, financial and otherwise. Citizens Against Government Waste suggest limiting the amount of projects that each member can request, prohibiting appropriations for any item that has not been subject of a congressional hearing, and extending the waiting period for a former member of Congress to become a lobbyist (Finnigan: 2006).

To provide oversight, the Center for American Progress recommends the leadership of both parties insist that each committee dedicate a greater portion of its staff resources to professionals with the management and budgetary knowledge to conduct effective oversight. Each committee should review all programs and activities within their jurisdiction and establish oversight priorities (Podesta & Lilly: 2007).

Lobbyist reform should address problems of campaign contributions, private jet travel, lavish meals, and trips. There needs to be more effective reporting and disclosure systems. For example, it should be a violation of House and Senate ethics for a member to solicit or accept a contribution from a lobbyist with business before the body. Also, leadership PACs should be banned or sharply restricted. ⁴⁸

Lobbying reforms need to be accompanied by real enforcement provisions, including an independent, outside role in ethics adjudication consistent with Congress’s constitutional requirements. Several reform groups have endorsed the creation of an Office of Public Integrity.

Electoral competition should be increased. Any changes in campaign finance law that steer resources to challengers would help. Mann and Ornstein recommend free air time, incentives for small donors, subsidized voter brochures, other forms of public financing, and more lenient contribution limits for start-up funds. Some have suggested barring members from raising money outside their districts or banning fund raising between January and June every year. This would provide some breathing space for lawmaking without the demands and corrupting atmosphere of fundraising. But such a change would most likely be an ethics matter, not as a law, because it is a ‘free speech’ violation.

Specific Reform Legislation

The Ethics and Lobbying Disclosure Act (S. 1) passed in September 2007 makes a number of important changes (Voting: 96-2 & 411-8). The Act increases the period before an ex-representative can lobby (Sec. 101); it requires lobbyists to report every six months for donations over two-hundred dollars (Sec. 203); it requires candidate committees to report bundled contributions totaling over fifteen thousand dollars within six months (Sec. 204); it requires objections to proceedings be submitted with detailed reasoning within six days of the objection (Sec. 512); it shall publicize earmark requests at least 48 hours before the item comes to a vote (Sec. 512); it requires candidates and members of Congress pay for non-commercial air travel at market value (Sec. 601); and it prohibits members and candidates from accepting free air travel (except for commercial carriers, Federal entities, or foreign states) (Sec. 601).

The Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007 (H.R. 1255), introduced in March 2007, is to nullify the 2001 presidential executive order #13233and restore public access to presidential records. The bill was passed in the House and now has to be debated on in the Senate.

Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (H.R. 2316), introduced in May 2007, is to provide more rigorous requirements with respect to disclosure and enforcement of lobbying laws and regulations. The bill passed in the House three-hundred ninety-six to twenty-two. The bill now has to be voted on in the Senate but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has blocked appointment of Senate conferees so that the bill passed in each chamber can not be reconciled.

The Improving Government Accountability Act (H.R. 928), introduced in February 2007, is to promote independence and accountability for the Inspector General.⁴⁹ This bill passed in the House in October 2007 (404-11). The bill is currently in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Amendments of 2007 (H.R. 1309), introduced in March 2007, is to promote openness in, and public access to, government information. The bill passed in the House in May 2007 (308-117) and is currently in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

The Federal Employee Protection of Disclosures Act (H.R. 1317), which has been introduced by a number of previous Congresses, is to strengthen protections for federal employees who come forward to report waste, fraud, abuse, and national security violations. However, no action is currently being taken on this bill.

Conclusion

Corruption and power imbalance have resulted in clear violations of executive tyranny and factional violence. Lax monitoring and inadequate punishments are providing an accommodating environment for a radical and dangerous government. Congress is wasting trillions of the public money and changes are needed as soon as possible.

Congress is unable to operate efficiently or effectively because of problems with records, documentation, and financial systems. The United States is running a three trillion three-hundred billion dollar deficit (spending more money than is taken in) and total debts are about forty-nine trillion dollars. Bush has lied about a number of polices that has resulted in a ten trillion five-hundred billion dollars shift in wealth to the elite. Congress has been complicit in this and they can not be trusted to make effective decisions. Congressional practices are anything but civil or courteous due to an extreme ideological polarization. The three times increase in filibusters is just one indication of this problem.

Congress is stealing money, transactions with Congress require money, the purpose of public jobs is money, it costs money to get these jobs, members of Congress are clearly beholden to big money interests, and money determines Congressional action and U.S. policy.

Creating effective climate change policies is an uphill battle against the deep pockets of big oil, automobile, and agricultural industries. Subsidies include sixteen trillion dollars per year for fossil energy, one trillion eight-hundred billion dollars for the sugar industry, and one trillion six-hundred billion dollars for the dairy industry. These subsidies need to be re-evaluated in the spirit of sustainability. They need to stop because they are creating many negative social externalities and this change would be synergistic with large reductions in GHGs with net economic benefit.

Transparency, accountability, and close monitoring are vital to put a check on the growth of no-bid contracts. Current practices are undermining the quality of important services. Contracts have increased eighty-sven percent between 2000 and 2005 and now make up about three-hundred seventy-seven billion dollars (Lilly: 2007).

If ever the term “breach of the peace” were invoked, perhaps it is appropriate to describe the complete failure of Congressional oversight to hold President Bush accountable for violations of numerous laws. President Bush has been complicit in torture, a violation of the U.S. Constitution and at least seven international treaties, he has initiated an illegal war, and he has been rewriting and reinterpreting legislation with over 500 constitutional objections. President Bush’s actions are significantly worse than the Nixon scandals: his administration has undermined the public’s trust in the government’s intelligence and governing capacity.

To address these issues, the public has an important role in holding corrupt representatives accountable in elections and make government reform a top priority. The public should pressure representatives to support a number of important reforms:

• H.R. 1255 for public access to presidential records,

• H.R. 2316 to require lobbying disclosure and enforcement,

• H.R. 928 for Inspector General independence and accountability,

• H.R. 1309 for public access to government information,

• H.R. 1317 for protection federal employees who report waste, fraud, abuse, or national security violations, and

• Opposition to H.R. 6166 & S. 3930 that would pardon President Bush from war crimes.

Additional reforms not currently in Congress include:

• redistricting (gerrymandering) reform for more competitive elections,

• increasing Congress’s work schedule,

• reducing earmarks,

• committing more committee resources to oversight and establish priorities for all programs within their jurisdiction,

• prohibiting lobbyist solicitations if they have business before the body,

• creating an Office of Public Integrity, and

• Increasing election competition with a change in campaign finance reform.

The powers granted to Congress are relatively meaningless in the absence of effective Congressional oversight. Such a Congress becomes a threat to our democracy because it fails to exercise the restraint on executive power that our founding fathers so carefully designed it to perform. Such an incapacitated Congress is also a threat to sustainable development. If global climate change is to be addressed at the appropriate scale the American government has to be reformed.

The November 2008 presidential elections will make a significant difference in the dynamic of institutional behavior and the policy agenda. Many of the institutional reforms recommended have been germinating in Congress for a while now and many of the presidential candidates are running on platforms of accountability and governance reform.

Experts believe that the majority of leaders in Congress are not interested in change and that for change to happen it must be forced upon them or they must be replaced (Mann & Ornstein: 2005). Changes in government necessitate a minimal level of public awareness and mobilization. The next chapter will evaluate the health of the American citizenry.

Chapter Four

Awareness and Political Participation

The prioritization of problems is important so that the optimal policy can be distinguished and scarce resources be appropriated efficiently for the greatest public benefit. But efficient appropriations are not possible without effective governance. And effective governance is not possible without public involvement. The American tradition has defined this involvement as a republican virtue—a willingness to undertake political action on the basis of a commitment to the common good (Abbott: 2005).

‘Political will’ is often cited as a limiting factor preventing necessary action. Yale Economist and climate specialist William Nordhaus comments on the importance of action at all levels: “While reducing harmful side effects is in principle possible at modest cost, human societies might lack the political will or skill to take measures to internalize the externalities” (Brock: 2004). Correcting these market failures is extraordinarily difficult. A growing number of pundits are pronouncing that our society is incapable of surmounting an elementary requirement of modern citizenship (Burchell: 1995). Participation in the political process is at an all-time low and people’s conception of their civic duty is more egocentric (Culver: 2005).

There is little doubt that America is on the verge of a major cultural climate change. The energy bills being discussed will have far reaching consequences, but the public does not seem to know enough about this crucial debate. The public has an important role in the policy development but, unfortunately, there are incentives to not participate. Political life has become too large in scale, too manipulated by money, too stage-managed by the media, and too dominated by ‘experts’ to be rewarding for most citizens.

Another problem is the emotional disconnect between the huge drama of global warming and the pedestrian nature of carpooling and compact fluorescent bulbs. The mismatch between the magnitude of the problem and the seductiveness of easy and illusory solutions reflects a degree of denial among even the most earnest advocates. This pedestrian approach conceals counterproductive consequences: by persuading concerned citizens to cut back on their personal energy use, these groups are promoting the implicit message that climate change can be solved by individual resolve. It cannot. These policies are meant to be the introduction of a gradual change, but the urgency of climate change necessitates much faster action. It necessitates trillions of dollars of investment into social welfare through energy efficiency services and awareness campaigns to encourage behavior changes.

The Media

The mass media is considered the fourth branch of government because it is the public’s primary source of information in which to hold elected representatives accountable. There is a conflict with the fact that American media is a highly competitive, profit driven industry, that emphasizes entertainment. The media needs to embrace their responsibility of providing better government oversight and informing the public with an emphasis on depth rather than simplicity.

The media’s failure is directly correlated to the decline of public participation, respectful dialogue, and critical attention to government. With the media not covering vital public policy issues, the public is forced to become their own investigative journalist—a full time and difficult task for even well paid professionals. There is an overwhelming amount of information and the media is doing a very poor job at filtering out what is most important to the citizenry.

In The Problem of the Media (2004), Robert McChesney writes “It is difficult to imagine much headway being made on the crucial social issues that face our nation given how poorly they are covered by the current U.S. media system.” The media system has generated a hyper-commercial carpet bombing of our culture that is decidedly unwelcome by much of the population (McChesney: 2004).

Policies have been made in the public’s name but without the public’s informed consent. This is the root of the media crisis, as well as the climate change crisis, and many other problems in the U.S. today. Over the past two decades the shift in media policy has been defined by a political philosophy that dogmatically equates generating profits with generating maximum human happiness, and this has only exacerbated the crisis (McChesney: 2004).

Media Reform

The media has a critical role in providing the public with information about how to become GHG neutral. To encourage republican virtue and public participation in solving global warming the media should provide a message of urgency, not fear, and of opportunity, not despair. The politics of fear necessary to promote global warming policy is in conflict with promoting republican virtue.

Framing global climate change as a crisis rather than a challenge or opportunity is an unfortunate necessity for political reasons because it is “competing” with the Iraq war and health care for the highest priority. As we have established, climate change policies are synergistic with health care and even the U.S.’s international campaign to spread democracy in the Middle East and fixing many other problems. So, describing this relationship as a competition is misleading.

Broadcast media, which should be an open forum for democracy, has been devolving into a marketplace exclusively for commerce. Robert Kennedy Jr. believes that a resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine is necessary to deal with this problem. The Fairness Doctrine was a United States FCC regulation requiring broadcast licenses to present controversial issues of public importance in an honest, equitable and balanced manner. It mandated that broadcast media has a duty to maintain an informed public. Among other things, broadcasters had to air children’s and community-based programming, and the rules were weighted to encourage diversity of ownership and local control. The Fairness Doctrine governed television and radio for most of the twentieth century. The doctrine has since been withdrawn by the FCC in 1988.

The Fairness Doctrine made possible the last program of national broadcast for mass public education about the hazards of smoking. The tobacco industry was made to donate about $298 million for this purpose. The fossil fuel industry should likewise be made to donate a similar amount to support campaigns for GHG neutrality.

In addition to the Fairness Doctrine, experts have recommended a law that would grant the media quasi-public status (Stein: 2004; Barron: 1967). Empowering speech rights offer the best foundation for democratic communication (Stein: 2004). This is based on the idea that information and communication are critical national resources that cannot be left entirely to private and unaccountable domains (Stein: 2004; Schiller: 1989).

Ownership patterns that have resulted in media mega-corporations should be more regulated. There needs to be a “large, well-funded, structurally pluralistic, and diverse nonprofit and noncommercial media sector, as well as a more competitive and decentralized commercial sector. Where economics preclude competitive commercial markets, there must be transparent regulation in the public interest” (McChesney: 2004).

Because communication resources are not distributed widely or equitably, future democratic communication depends on adopting policies to protect speech rights. The government has a compelling interest creating a workable structure of principles, practices, and institutions to advance the public dialogue.

The approach advocated by Al Gore is to pay more attention to the quality and integrity of television programming made by citizens. He argues that Americans must be empowered with the ability and the inclination to fully participate in the national conversation of democracy (Gore: 2007). He contends that we have a wealthy society of tens of millions of incredibly talented and resourceful individuals who play virtually no role whatsoever as citizens (Bushman & Anderson: 2001).

We are entering an era of profound public debate over the very nature of our media system. The growing movement to reform media is a necessary aspect of larger social movements and for the health of our politics and society.

Civics 101: Republican Virtue

Whether or not the American governance crisis is solved depends on the cumulative moral value of individuals and society and the manifestation of these values as meaningful action.

If there are serious injustices in our society that can only be rectified by political action, then citizens should recognize an obligation to protest against that injustice. If political institutions are no longer functioning, perhaps due to excessive levels of apathy or the abuse of power, then citizens have an obligation to protect these institutions from being undermined. It is the people’s right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security. To sit passively by while injustices are committed or democratic institutions collapse, in the hope that others will step in, is to be a free-rider (Kymlicka: 300).

Republican virtue is about regularly taking part in local and national politics, not just voting on election days. Active citizens keep informed and speak out against public measures that they regard as unjust, unwise, or too expensive. Good democratic citizens openly support politics they regard as just and prudent. They go to public meetings and join voluntary organizations to discuss and deliberate with others about the politics that will affect them all (Shklar: 2000). Republican virtue is related to the ideas of civic humanists like Aristotle, Cicero, and Machiavelli who believe man is a political being whose self-realization occurs only through participation in public life and not only with private or selfish ends.

The health and stability of a modern democracy depends on the justice of its basic institutions and also on the qualities and attitudes of its citizens. A republican virtue is manifested as a desire to participate in the political process in order to promote the public good and hold political authorities accountable. Republican virtue is also manifested in a willingness to show self restraint and exercise personal responsibility in our economic demands and in personal choices which affect our health and the environment. “Without citizens who possess these qualities, democracies become difficult to govern, even unstable” (Kymlicka: 285).

Public ignorance and political apathy are putting a great strain on our democracy. People’s desire to participate in the political process is frustrated because the power of money is having a greater importance in the policy process than citizen group lobbying. With such a low level of political efficacy and a disincentive to participate, is there any wonder why people are not aware of our current failures in governance? People are aware that there is something deeply wrong, but only a minority is conscience of the depth of the problem.

Why would citizens exercise republican virtue when it conflicts with other preferences or goals and is seen as a sacrifice or burden? People do have self-interest in the stability of America’s democratic society and the overall level of virtue in society, but this is perceived as a rather remote and long-term interest—a perception that is based on an inaccurate reality. The predominant thought is that ‘my individual action is unlikely to have any significant impact on the overall health of the democratic system.’ This is partly true: individual action, including voting, is much less effective than when people are involved with advocacy organizations (Caplan: 2007).

Classical liberalists believe that a democracy can function effectively even in the absence of a virtuous citizenry by creating checks and balances. Institutional and procedural devices such as the separation of powers, a bicameral legislature, and federalism are the foundations of the American Constitution because they prevent oppressive government. However, it has become clear that procedural-institutional mechanisms to balance self-interest are not enough and that some level of civic virtue and public spiritedness is required (Galstone: 217, 244; Macado: 138-9).

Contemporary literature on citizenship focuses on the general decline in people’s commitment to public participation or critical attention to the government. Too many people have abandoned this republican virtue and the result may be to put the very legitimacy and stability of democratic institutions in question (Kymlicka: 299-316).

There is something fundamentally lacking in the American experience: it is too easy for each person to lead an entirely private life with no real sense of civic responsibility. As Rousseau elegantly put it, “As soon as public service ceases to be the Citizens’ principal business, and they prefer to serve with their purse rather than with their person, the State is already close to ruin” (Book III, Chapter 15: 113).

The Roman historian Titus Livius (‘Livy’) said that what makes a society strong is the well-being of its people: “basic justice, opportunity, and the modicum of spiritual reward” (Murphy: 202). Without certain qualities, democracies become unstable:

• a sense of unity,

• an understanding of personal choices that affect the public’s health and the environment,

• a desire to participate in the political process in order to promote the public good and hold political authorities accountable, and

• a willingness to show self-restraint and exercise personal responsibility in personal economic demands (Kymlicka: 290).

Elections

Elections might be a weaker deterrent to misconduct than they seem on the surface: they make it more important to please special interests than the general public, voters are deeply ignorant about politics, and doubts about the rationality of voters are empirically justified (Caplan: 2007). The fundamental premise of democracy, that people choose and then influence those who govern, has been undermined by the current state of affairs. The honored way of holding representatives accountable through elections is being thoroughly manipulated by elected politicians to secure their power. There is a surprising degree of complacency to what is happening because people do not know about it.

A large number of citizens have come to regard the election process as unresponsive and corrupt. People have grown cynical and stay home on Election Day. These are seen as some of the many potential reasons why the United States has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the western world (Campbell & Jurek: 2003).⁵⁰

The incumbency rate has been well over ninety per cent since the 1970s, with rarely more than five to ten percent of incumbents losing their House seat every election cycle. This congressional stagnation has been attributed to a number of factors. First, incumbents almost always have better financed campaigns.⁵¹ Second, the advantage of incumbency is roughly seven to ten percentage points of the vote. Third, redistricting severely distorts the relationship between votes and seats and protects incumbents and diminishes competition (Mann & Ornstein: 230).⁵²

Community & Moral Conscience

People need to expand their moral conscience. It is essential for cooperation, for our community, and for our environment. This change could be considered a moral progression similar to humanity’s progression in censuring slavery, torture, or advancing liberties in the 1960s civil rights movement. Expanding our moral conscience to respect the earth’s biotic communities is dependent on realizing our interconnectedness with the natural world (Rachel Carson’s expose on DDT being a key landmark) and also our interdependence with the natural world (Dennis Meadows’ and Paul Ehrlich’s exposes on sustainable growth, highlighting our dependence on limited resources, being other key landmarks). What is necessary for this expanded moral conscience is an enlightened self interest based on an increased political and ecological literacy (Leopold: 1949). Our perception of what matters has wide-reaching consequences for our personal lives and for society as a whole.

Self-actualization can occur when basic needs—biological drives, security, and the ego’s need for recognition—have been met. This creates a freedom to actualize our potentialities. This requires that we be able to identify with larger values that transcend ourselves and participate in areas of public life that affect our existence (Benello, 42). In receiving the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Al Gore’s first public response was this: “The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.”

Republican virtue involves being involved in public affairs, which can be interesting on many levels and can therefore accommodate a pluralist society with diverse conceptions of happiness and well-being. Climate change involves so many issues that everyone can declare ownership of a particular niche that is personally meaningful.

Addressing global climate change represents a meaningful global goal that can help focus humanity’s efforts. Pursuing climate change mitigation and abatement requires an involvement in valued activities such as political involvement, community leadership roles, and/or participating in a collective project.

There is a need for people to be more aware of both our immediate and extended global communities if we are to achieve a more equitable distribution of resources. A global conception of democratic citizenship focused on international institutions such as the European Union and the United Nations is important because of their role in addressing severe economic imbalance.

Interest Groups

Citizens are a powerful force in government policy and this power is most often seen as a function of people’s ability to form an interest group. The basic unit of political influence is not the individual, but a group: politics is defined as the relationships of power and the power of relationships. Theorists who believe civil society is the seedbed of republican virtue emphasize that voluntary organizations like church, family, environmental groups, neighborhood associations, and charities are necessary (Madison et al.: 1788 & Kymlicka, 300). Actors outside of government who influence policy include these interests groups as well as political parties, the media, researchers, academics, and consultants.

Despite major campaigns, Shellenberger and Nordhaus (2005) argue that environmental lobbies have had little success on the global warming front. Perhaps this changed when millions of people signed the Live Earth Pledge in July 2007.⁵³ Shellenberger and Nordhaus claim that “not one of America's environmental leaders is articulating a vision of the future commensurate with the magnitude of the crisis.” This has probably also been addressed with the leadership of Al Gore, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize recipient (just three months after his Live Earth event).

Al Gore has united millions of people around the issue of climate change by asking people to pledge to a number of important actions that will reduce their GHGs and pressure the government to do the same. With millions of people linked into the same Save Our Selves (SOS) network there is an opportunity to ask these people for their leadership in reducing emissions and contributing to community awareness campaigns. The SOS community can now unite with other powerful organizations such as the Sierra Club who are also involved with bottom-up grassroots campaigns.

The means for addressing GHG neutrality remain incomplete and weak, and a decentralized structure should be developed to organize these groups to raise awareness (Held: 2006). According to a BBC poll, ninety percent of people worldwide believe that action is necessary on climate change.  Two-thirds of people go further, saying “it is necessary to take major steps starting very soon” (BBC: September, 2007). There is a high degree of basic awareness about climate change but a deeper understanding would result, as Al Gore said, in an elevation of global consciousness and support.

The great opportunity is to organize the sixty percent of people that feel that major steps should be taken very soon. There is likely to be a strong correlation between these people and who the future community leaders will be.

Interest groups are the primary means by which the public is represented and the government feels pressure to make climate change policies. Nonprofits (incorporated interest groups) offer the opportunity to serve society professionally. Nonprofits address community needs or advocate for community and social change. There are about twelve and a half million people in nonprofit organizations, or about nine and a half percent of the total U.S. workforce. About sixty-two percent of graduating college seniors are interested in careers related to public service, yet only nine percent know how to find a job in the sector (Dorsey & Galinsky: 2006). Such a high interest in becoming involved with social change speaks volumes about the potential for sweeping, revolutionary changes. It also reflects how strong the American republican virtue really is and how much social capital the United States has to invest. Because of this disparity between over sixty percent interest in nonprofit work and less than ten percent opportunity, the climate change movement should meet this demand by significantly enlarging and expanding public involvement with community nonprofits.

Imagine a coordinated global movement in which activist organizations around the world mount simultaneous campaigns to reduce GHG emissions and pressure their individual governments to impose uniform regulations on multinational industries—and to penalize governments that do not comply. “Sudden and unpredictable eruptions of sweeping social and political movements are always a possibility. Given the urgency and magnitude of the escalating pace of climate change, the only hope lies in a rapid and unprecedented mobilization of humanity around this issue” (Goelbspan, 204).

National campaigns are being run by a number of interest group coalitions: the Energy Action Coalition is working to support the youth movement by hosting the Campus Climate Challenge; the Climate Crisis Coalition is an organization that helps organize international protests; and the Alliance for Climate Protection, chaired by Al Gore, raises awareness—and its first event, in collaboration with the organization Save Our Selves (SOS), was called Live Earth and involved one-hundred and fifty musicians on all seven continents on 7.7.07. The goal of Live Earth and the Alliance for Climate Protection is get people to pledge to three personal changes and four political actions to help climate change mitigation and abatement. And millions of people have responded.

The major environmental organizations are also significantly contributing to the climate movement: the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) are among some of the biggest national contributors in raising public support for climate change mitigation and abatement. Other major players that are involved in more institutional rather than public approaches include the Natural Resource Defense Council, Environmental Defense, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Climate Change Campaigns

Power Shift 2007 was a rally on November 2, 2007 at Washington D.C. for the first national youth summit to help solve the climate crisis. This event is part of a three day conference for thousands of young adults to “share ideas, learn new skills, make new connections, establish a national voice for our generation, and send a united message to our national leaders.” The goals are to (1) make the U.S. presidential candidates and congress take global warming seriously, (2) empower a truly diverse network of young leaders, and (3) achieve broad geographic diversity.

Greenpeace is running a campaign called Step it Up. This is a national effort to organize community rallies to demand leadership on global warming. Rallies were held on November 3, 2007, similar to their 2006 rallies in which one-thousand four-hundred rallies across the country were organized behind the goal of reducing GHG emissions eighty percent by 2050.

Sierra Club’s effort to network communities is called the Cool Cities campaign. This campaign should be used as a model for small community groups of about ten to twenty people. Groups of this size contributing about three hours a week are able to raise a great deal of awareness about important issues. This level of participation could lobby the government with tactics that involve live video conferences, documentaries of projects, montages of community interviews, trips to the state capitol, and unlimited amount of artistic and creative public relations tactics.

The Sierra Club’s campaign toolkit includes ten steps on how to organize a successful campaign and is a great framework by which to approach the political world.⁵⁴

In step ten, the Sierra Club gives is a list of ways to get and keep people involved including: presentations to government officials, business owners, energy experts and community groups, showing the film Kilowatt Ours, holding a book discussion group, sending out energy solution stories via e-mail, mailing a Cool City newsletter, participating in energy-related events, creating your own events, organizing group tours, and asking your local community newspaper for a regular column about energy issues. They also suggest joining the Interfaith Power and Light, a national organization who has over a ten-thousand members in about one-hundred Congregations just in Colorado.

All of these efforts combined are an extremely powerful force. It represents a significant change in the social attitude. It also represents a shift in reality. The new climate change paradigm that focuses on reducing energy consumption is now the new framework from which people operate and value their efforts. It is a change among only a few million in a society of hundreds of millions, but it is a change that can be expected to spread very fast.

Transition: Our Journey up to Now

Urgency is essential to prevent a collapse in civilization from oil wars, clathrate reservoirs, disease, malnutrition, and migration. The challenge: a one-hundred and fifty percent decrease in projected GHGs by 2060. The major global problem is that developing countries are expected to increase global emissions sixty to sixty-seven percent (and developed countries are expected to increase emissions about thirty percent but have much greater access to essential resources). Achieving global equity is of great urgency—but international institutions like the United Nations are having very limited success thus far.

The IPCC reports that governments need to prioritize informational, social, and attitudinal policies, but this is not happening. Governments have a responsibility to give significantly more resources to community leaders who can bring about behavioral changes. Communities need to make fast adaptations to prepare for impending resource shortages. Community leaders of this cultural climate change should focus on reducing fossil fuel use, land conservation, and sustainable agriculture (regional and small scale enterprises).

Essential to this sustainability movement is the political process that determines how effective these changes are. Unfortunately, this process is currently being dominated by big moneyed interests. Organizations, small businesses, non-profits, academics, and the general public all have a vital self-interest to lobby Congress—it would significantly benefit the public welfare in the scale of trillions of dollars and is a matter of short-term security.

Pressuring Congress is essential to this energy transition, but because American interest groups lobbying for this change are not powerful enough (compared to businesses like Exxon that have over ten billion dollars in profits), the legislation going through congress is extremely unbalanced. To achieve political balance and sustainability the public should:

1. Demand for reforms in the energy legislation. The bills being debated right now should not subsidize fossil fuels and it should not subsidize big agriculture over two trillion dollars. These bills are inequitable and inefficient. There is a window of opportunity to lobby Congress for these changes before January 2008 for the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act (H.R. 3221) and before April 2008 for the America’s Climate Security bill (S. 2191). There is a chance that these bills will have to be passed under the leadership of the next president after January 2009 (and so lobbying presidential candidates about this is vitally important too).

2. Demand climate change legislation that includes a GHG tax and substantial provisions for land and resource conservation. The Endangered Species Act should be updated to help advance sustainability and the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) should be expanded.

3. Demand governance reform. There are four extremely important reform bills in Congress right now, and for effective involvement: Bill H.R. 1255 should be lobbied for until November 2008 (and after, if necessary), Rep. McConnell (KY-R) should be pressured to allow debate over H.R. 2316 as soon as possible, H.R. 928 should be lobbied for before March 2008, and H.R. 1309 should be lobbied for before November 2008. Although not on the current agenda, H.R. 1317 should also be lobbied for continuously.

Governments and communities should establish long term plans to become GHG neutral. Volunteerism and public-services need to be expanded and this should not be difficult considering how important these changes are. Immediate actions should include lobbying for the above three changes. If the IPCC makes one thing clear, it is that there are significant benefits to be had!

The IPCC recommends that governments make Energy Service Corporations (ESCOs) a priority. Congress should fund a ClimateCorps ESCOs on the scale of about five-hundred billion dollars, and probably more. These institutions are critical in providing incentives for public sector leadership initiatives. The reason that something like this is not already in the policy pipeline, and the problem with the beginnings of this energy transition in general, is that a major power imbalance is biased toward creating radically dangerous polices.

The government is stealing the public money and using the public money to fund drastically inequitable and inefficient policies. Public ignorance and inaction with respect to this outrageous corruption—in large part because of a lack of transparency and a failure in media—is allowing money to dominate the political process. Sustainable policies will not be produced under these conditions.

The 2008 elections provide a great opportunity to hold corrupt members of Congress accountable. The easiest way to do this is to look at their voting histories and evaluate whether they are acting responsibly for the public or for the oil industry and themselves. The League of Conservation Voters has put together a comprehensive score card, based on each member’s record directly related to climate change policy. Knowing if your government representative is corrupt is an important civic duty and critical to a stable and legitimate government.

The media has a responsibility to provide government oversight and inform the public so that corrupt members can be held accountable and important policies can be made with the public consent. However, the American media is too profit driven and too obsessed with entertainment and simplicity to fulfill their duty to society.

Media reform is essential. The first thing the media should do is help reframe the global climate change issue as an opportunity, not a crisis. There should be an emotional appeal to urgency, not fear.

Congress has an important role to play in reforming the media. Congress should:

• Restore the Fairness Doctrine and establish children and community-based programming.

• Encourage media ownership diversity and local control.

• Make the media a quassi-public enterprise: create a media sector that is diverse, competitive, decentralized, pluralistic, and less-commercial.

• Encourage citizen-created media.

• Make the oil and agricultural industries donate money to a public education campaign on the scale of at least three-hundred million dollars.

Barriers to public involvement in both politics and making lifestyle changes include egoism, the dominance of big money and experts, the media, the global scale of the climate change, and an emotional disconnect, among others. A policy of immediatism will only be successful if people have a higher sense of political efficacy. The problem is that people have a misperception of our political reality (believing that involvement is too long-term and remote) and an under-appreciation for political involvement. The media and the government have a responsibility to encourage a republican virtue. Republican virtue in action includes:

• Regular political action,

• keeping informed,

• speaking out against injustices,

• participating in public meetings, and

• joining voluntary organizations.

The stability of the United States depends on the qualities and attitudes of its citizens. Political and environmental literacy is essential to create unity, invoke this republican virtue, and achieve an enlightened self-interest. An expansion of our collective moral conscience is about realizing our interconnectedness and interdependence with our community and natural world.

There are millions of people committed to this expanded community and who have pledged to reduce their own emissions as well as become politically engaged. These people will likely be the future community leaders and important actors in this energy transition and cultural climate change.

There are a number of national campaigns that should be expected to become enlarged and expanded thanks to about ninety percent support for this climate change movement. Three of the biggest campaigns include (1) PowerShift, which is about youth pressuring the government, (2) Step it Up, which is about community rallies, and (3) Cool Cities, which is about forming community organizations, pressuring local governments, and creating awareness campaigns. These efforts represent the beginnings of a very large social change.

PART III

Rising to the Challenge:

Achieving GHG Neutrality

Chapter Five

Case Study: Boulder, Colorado

The city of Boulder, Colorado is among the leading actors in the climate change movement. Boulder’s Mayor Mark Ruzzin is one of the original eight mayors that initiated the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement campaign.⁵⁵ The city of Boulder is the essence of ecological consciousness: it is surrounded by more than 31,000 acres of recreational open space and nature preserves with over one hundred miles of hiking paths.

Boulder adopted the goals of the Kyoto Protocol in 2002 to reduce GHG emissions seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012—but is expected to greatly surpass this global minimum. The city staff, energy experts, and local stakeholders drew up the Climate Action Plan to be a roadmap to meet this goal (City of Boulder: 2006). The Climate Action Plan is to help guide Boulder towards a sustainable energy future by reducing GHG emissions through a comprehensive approach.

The city’s primary role will be to act as a facilitator, educator, and to promote market transformation for energy efficiency and renewable energy products and services. The plan outlines three primary strategies for reducing emissions: Increase energy efficiency; Switch to renewable energy and vehicle fuels; and Reduce vehicle miles traveled (City of Boulder: 2002).

On November 8, 2006, residents in the City of Boulder passed the first GHG tax in the world. The Climate Action Plan Tax (Initiative 202) will be collected by the local electric utility based on the amount of electricity used. The average household will pay about $1.33 per month and an average business will pay $3.80 per month and the tax will generate about eight-hundred and sixty-thousand dollars to one million dollars annually through 2012 when it is set to expire. The estimated cost savings are sixty-three million dollars over the long term and will fund the city’s Climate Action Plan. (City of Boulder: 2006).

The Boulder city government has implemented a number of successful energy programs to address climate change mitigation: the city offers free home energy efficiency upgrades with weatherization services for lower income residents; the city provides free energy and water assessments to apartment buildings; the city sponsors contractors trainings focused on offering a comprehensive approach to home improvements (with Energy Star); and October is Energy Awareness Month and October 4^th is “Change a Light Day” where discounted CFLs and information about how to lower your carbon footprint are distributed.⁵⁶

One (of many) of the leading climate mitigation businesses in Boulder that should serve as a national model is the EcoCycle recycling center. It is one of the oldest and largest nonprofit recyclers in the United States and is working to provide a Zero Waste model for the rest of the world. It has received awards for zero-waste services from the Environmental Protection Agency and PBS’s NOVA science TV, a Wirth Chair award for advancing community sustainability and awards from the Department of Public Health and the Center for Resource Conservation. Having such a remarkable program in the city is invaluable to achieving GHG neutrality. “Recycling not only saves precious resources but also avoids the toxic processes used to turn these resources into consumer products… About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is just 28%” (EcoCycle: 2006 & EcoCycle: 2005).

One of the many organizations involved with building community and self-sufficiency is Boulder Valley Relocalization. This group was created by the Post Carbon Institute which is a national organization that offers research, project tools, education, and information about how to implement strategies to reduce energy consumption, increase community energy security, strengthen local economies, and improve environmental conditions and social equity.

Boulder city residents are very responsive to these efforts: in 2005 Boulder set a goal of signing up 500 wind power subscribers but were able to recruit more than eleven-hundred residents. And this is in addition to the more than five-thousand seven-hundred pre-existing green power customers (DOE: 2007). Boulder is now the only Green Power Community in the state of Colorado.⁵⁷ In 2005 the city produced forty-one million kilowatt hours (kWh) of renewable energy, enough to fully power sixteen percent, or five-thousand two-hundred of Boulder’s households, equivalent to about five percent of the community's total electricity needs. (DOE: 2007; City of Boulder: 2005 & Butler et al: 2006).⁵⁸

Boulder’s Climate Smart

The Climate Smart campaign (www.BeClimateSmart.com) is Boulder city’s attempt to create an online social network for mitigation and abatement effort. It is a citywide effort to help individuals and businesses increase energy efficiency and reduce their carbon footprint. The Zerofootprint tool helps cities and individuals track, compare and reduce their GHG emissions. The website also includes strategies to reduce energy use through conservation and efficiency.

The ClimateSmart campaign and Boulder city’s Office of Environmental Affairs has established residential programs to increase household energy efficiency and educate residents about the source of their home’s GHGs. Energy from homes accounts for about 16 percent of the Boulder city’s total GHGs and there are many cost effective improvements that can be made to reduce this energy use by an average of 40 percent (http://hes.lbl.gov/). The city’s Residential Energy Audit Program (REAP) is the primary means by which this is being accomplished. An energy audit costs one-hundred to three-hundred and fifty dollars depending on the size of the house, and this includes a fifty dollar audit subsidy from Boulder County (Conservation Center: 2007).

These home energy programs are important because sixty percent of US homes are under-insulated and plugging air leaks can save five to thirty percent on home heating bills. Installing high-efficient heating and cooling technology can cut costs up to fifty percent, and efficient appliances such as lights and refrigerators are now seventy-five and sixty percent more efficient than just a decade ago, respectively.

Another city program is called Neighborhood Sweeps. “It is an opportunity for the city to visit residents door to door and offer educational materials and energy saving resources.” The ClimateSmart program selects one to two neighborhoods each year for the University of Colorado’s Green Teams and Boulder County senior citizen tax workers to visit homes with ClimateSmart kits.⁵⁹ In October 2007, four Environmental Center volunteers and the senior citizens tax workers distributed more than two-hundred fifty energy efficiency kits (Hall: 2007).

Green Points Building Program

The Green Points building program, run by the Resource Conservation Ordinance of the City of Boulder, is an incentive for using efficient technologies that include passive or solar space heaters, solar water heaters, or photovoltaics. It involves using comprehensive measures to make buildings more efficient in both the residential and construction sectors.

To earn “points” with the remodeling program (there is also a new home program), the program requires building permit applicants to include as many green options in their remodeling projects as they can. Compliance with each measure must be demonstrated by either an inspection by City Inspection Services or by self-certification on the Green Points application.

There is a worksheet to demonstrate compliance with the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) and receive energy code Green Points by calculating the number of points over the minimum requirements.⁶⁰ The minimum requirements are, for an interior remodel, 10 points for 100 to 1,000 sq. ft, 15 points for 1,001 to 2,000 sq. ft, and 25 points for 2,001 sq. ft. or greater. There are also minimum requirements for new construction (50-65 points), and additions (25-50 points).

The self-certification includes the following point system: 1-5 points for the use of reclaimed or recycled materials in construction; 1-6 points for 10,000 to 60,000 gallons of annual water saving, respectively; 3 points for the use of engineered swales to filter storm-water runoff;⁶¹ 1-4 points for items of xeriscaping; 3 points for drip irrigation installation; 1-3 points for installing four, eight, or twelve compact fluorescent light bulbs; 1-4 points for 1-4 energy-efficient appliances; 1-2 points for efficient light controls; 1 point for a clothesline; 10 points for converting electric resistance heat to gas; 4 points for replacing electric water heater with a gas water heater; and 6 points for evaporative cooling.

Points can be earned by city inspections based on the following: 1 point for each additional tree, up to six trees; 2 points for a tankless water heater; 3 points for an “on-demand” water switch, up to 10 points for double-glazed window upgrades (with the most points for windows with argon/Heat Mirror or for low-e coating); 2-7 points for insulation in walls, ceilings, and the type of insulation; natural cooling; 2-8 points for air infiltration; 2 points for a whole-house fan; 8 points for an air to air heat exchanger (heat recovery ventilation); 10 points for a solar hot water heating system installation, 5 points for passive solar potential preservation; and 6, 12, or 20 points for 20, 40, or 60 percent passive solar heating fraction of the building, respectively.

Incentives for Renewable Energy

A thirty-five percent sales tax refund is available for solar water heating, photovoltaics, and solar pool heating, in both commercial and residential sectors. In 2006 the city established a solar sales and use tax rebate for PV and solar water heating installations. PV owners can receive a tax refund drawn from the unrestricted tax revenues collected from solar energy sales. Namaste Solar, a solar electric instillation company in Boulder, describes the incentives (2007):

Colorado residents and businesses can benefit from both Federal and State financial incentives: (1) the new Federal Energy Bill provides a 30% federal tax credit for solar electric systems installed on homes and businesses between January 1, 2006, to December 31, 2007 (there's a $2,000 cap for residences and no cap for businesses); and (2) Colorado's Amendment 37 (A37) calls for many of the state's utilities to provide financial incentives in the form of cash rebates. Xcel Energy, for example, will initially provide a total of $4.50 per watt of installed system capacity.

Approximately fifty-five percent of solar sales and use tax revenues go to restricted funds. Thirty-five percent of unrestricted revenues are refunded to the PV owner. The city estimates that the refund equates to approximately one percent of average PV system costs (dsireusa.org). The remaining sixty-five percent of the unrestricted revenues are used to fund the Renewable Energy Fund. This fund is used to rehabilitate or install solar energy systems on affordable housing developments and site-based non-profit organizations (dsireusa.org).

Community Leadership: the University of Colorado at Boulder

The University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) is the City’s single greatest contributor to sustainability efforts. CU produces about six percent of the city’s total GHGs—which is decreasing about two and a half percent per year (Hall: 2007). The university buys wind power to offset about nine and a half percent of campus electricity use in five buildings and has reduced its energy use sixteen percent per square foot since 2002. In June 2007 Chancellor Peterson committed two-hundred fifty-thousand dollars in reducing campus energy use (with fifty-thousand dollars of this for renewable energy) and signed the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment to affirm CU as one the nation’s environmental leaders.⁶²

In 2006 the CU Student Union created the Sustainable CU fund with about one-hundred fifty-seven thousand dollars available per year for energy related projects including: a solar canopy, residence halls recycling, greenhouses, biodiesel processors, energy monitoring systems, and electric vehicles.⁶³

The Environmental Center’s Blueprint for a Green Campus (2006) describes how GHG-neutrality can be achieved. Some of the Blueprint’s goals include: achieving “zero climate impact” by 2025, reducing water use five percent per year for five years, creating a “waste free campus” and doubling recycling diversion rates, increasing environmental justice actions that protect health of at-risk populations, implementing an environmental literacy course in core curriculum, and bringing about behavior changes and a culture of sustainability that can produce significant cost savings (Environmental Center: 2006).

CU has a number of outstanding environmental programs that contribute to climate change mitigation: The Earth Education organization provides free environmental education to local public and private schools in the community, CU’s recycling center is one of the oldest and best campus recycling programs in the country,⁶⁴ students can rent bikes at no cost, and the Environmental Center actively promotes the renewable energy certificate (REC) Wind Energy Challenge program.

With about thirty-thousand students consistently voting to increase fees for renewable energy, CU has incredible leverage in advancing Boulder’s sustainability. Among other notable accomplishments, CU has placed first place in the last two (2002 and 2005) international National Solar Decathlon competitions, which is an engineering, architectural, and business collaboration that is truly a pioneering event (CU: 2007).⁶⁵ It is no wonder CU is the eleventh best public university in the nation (The Economist: 2004).⁶⁶

Conclusion

The city of Boulder, Colorado is leading the nation in sustainability and ecological consciousness. The city is the first government in the world to where citizens have voted for a GHG tax, and this tax will contribute about one million dollars per year for sustainability efforts. The city has a three part strategy to achieve sustainability:

1. increase efficiency,

2. use renewable energy, and

3. reduce vehicle miles traveled.

Boulder’s Climate Smart campaign focuses on residential energy audits because the residential sector uses sixteen percent of the city’s energy and about forty percent of this can be reduced cost effectively. The city is also helping to promote awareness, but these campaigns are more limited. The Green Points Building Program provides incentives for efficient technology and sets minimum standards. When the city, state, and federal incentives are aggregated, residential solar technologies are thirty-five percent off.

Boulder is the home to numerous sustainable businesses like EcoCycle and community organizations like the Boulder Valley Relocalization. These supportive institutions are essential for social behavior change. Boulder’s greatest asset is the University. CU has been improving energy efficiency by over two and a half percent per year since 2000—more than twelve years ahead of the proposed national curve. CU is part of the University Climate Commitment and in 2007 alone, over four-hundred thousand dollars will be invested in improving efficiency (residence hall recycling, energy monitoring, and electric vehicles) and generating renewable energy (solar, biodiesel, and food energy). The Environmental Center’ Blueprint for a Green Campus will help CU achieve GHG neutrality by 2025, reduce water use by eighty percent, and be a zero-waste institution. In addition to this, CU is actively advancing and raising awareness about environmental equity and promoting sustainable behavioral changes.

Chapter Six

A Cultural Climate Change

We are living through an era of change. This change is on a scale never before seen. It is a change in magnitude larger than the destruction from all of the world’s wars and all but one mass extinction in the earth’s history. The paradigm of change is a shift of our collective conscience affecting our attitudes and the way we interact with our environment.⁶⁷ These changes have just started, but expect it to advance very fast.

There are a growing number of people dedicating themselves to climate mitigation and political involvement: about sixty percent of people think large changes should happen soon and over sixty percent of graduating university students are interested in public service work. This is an amazing amount social capital and it needs to be mobilized as soon as possible.

There is an extraordinary moral progression happening before our eyes. The culture of change is among us and we will all be affected whether we want to or not. But it would be foolish not to want to be involved with this change: this economic, social, and political change—a change from inefficiency and corruption to global equity and government integrity. Trillions upon trillions of wasted public money will be freed to support this change and the world will be better for it.

The goal for climate friendly cities like Boulder should be to achieve GHG neutrality before 2050. The great opportunity and challenge is for governments to demonstrate how such a transition can occur while achieving the most positive economic, health, and environmental benefits. The faster cities can become carbon-neutral, the more benefits there will likely be. These places will also be at significantly less risk of sudden climate change impacts.

Cities like Boulder that have such extensive climate policy infrastructure already should embrace CU’s goal of achieving GHG neutrality before 2025. Planning for GHG neutrality is not only feasible and practical but can also serve as a method of mobilizing communities.

The global rat race to carbon-neutrality is officially on and the first U.S. city to reach this goal will be greatly celebrated. The city of Auckland in New Zealand and Maribyrnong in Australia have both declared its goal to be carbon neutral by 2020 (Auckland: 2007; Maribyrnong: 2007). Newcastle Upon Tyne in the United Kingdom and Copenhagen in Denmark are setting a carbon-neutrality goal of 2025 (Carrell: 2002 & Hansen: 2007).

There has never been a more appropriate time to work on enhancing civic engagement. Interest group formation is critical to climate change mitigation. Helping communities increase their political efficacy and awareness is about enhancing democratic capacities and building civic skills with increased interaction.

A Proposal for GHG Neutrality

An invigorated and well funded effort is greatly needed if the United States is to become the driving force behind a global GHG neutrality movement. I proposed earlier that Congress should appropriate at least five-hundred billion dollars for Energy Service Corporations/Cooperation (ESCOs)—a ClimateCorps. Governments should subsidize the cost of living for these workers so they can be completely devoted to public service projects. The following are features of an ideal ESCO:

• Provide free comprehensive energy audits. This includes both home improvements and lifestyle and behavior changes (reducing consumption) The purpose is to overcome the high cost of acquiring reliable information and choosing an appropriate portfolio of change.

• Raise awareness about (1) personal GHG neutrality, (2) governance reform, and (3) climate change related legislation.

• Facilitate local political advocacy associations/organizations: make political involvement easy and convenient.

• Promote regional agricultural production for food and fuel.

• Increase effectiveness with a youth internship program.

• Workers and members maintain a GHG neutral lifestyle.

• Consider home-renting programs that divest rent payments into energy efficiency and/or renewable energy.

Funding ESCOs are about government providing the impetus and incentive for localized volunteerism. It emphasizes outreach programs, encourages political involvement, and demonstrates what a GHG neutral lifestyle looks like. It is an attempt to overcome the difficulties of collective action.

An emphasis on art and creativity will aid in this cultural climate change. In particular, film should be broadcast for outreach and political campaigns. Using visual messaging should be used more frequently at the organizational and community levels.

Community leaders need to know every aspect of climate change, including its history, trends, key statistics, supporting data, current and proposed policy measures, the economics of the problem, and the major players in the field (Dorsey & Galinsky: 2006). With this comprehensive knowledge these leaders can develop a holistic vision that is grounded in practical strategies.

The Organizational Imperative

Achieving GHG neutrality will require a cultural climate change that is about being part of something greater than ourselves. Effective political participation, which is a commitment to stand up for our beliefs and to be part of the climate change solution, requires a significant increase in public advocacy organizations. Organization requires high levels of entrepreneurial skills involving capital accumulation, market research, technical planning, and human organizing (Dorsey & Galinsky: 2006).

Organizations in this context are defined by voluntary associations who freely identify with the advocacy goals of the organization. They meet one at least every other week and are usually ten to twenty people (Benello, 51). The face-to-face groups are the most significant means for change because it is here that the process of political and cultural socialization takes place. Possessive individualism is replaced with “a capacity to integrate individual needs into collective social purposes” (Benello, 51).

A structure must evolve through self-organizing and participation capable of responding continuously to the needs of its members. What is required is more structure rather than less, but in the end it is up to the individual to decide what will work best. The more extensive the organization, the greater danger of top-down control, and the more skillful the organizational design must be to avoid this.

There should be more complex organizations with more horizontal linkages, more decision-making units, more overlapping sub-structures, and more flexibility than traditional hierarchical organizations. Members should be able to participate in the continuing shaping of their organizations, and in the process, shape themselves (Benello, 77-78).

Becoming involved with our community is about discovering our power to make change—a life-altering, perspective-shifting, courageous change. And it is this change paradigm that defines our new reality. It is about making ecological consciousness part of America’s DNA (Friedman: 2007). “It is more than just participating in society. It is the possibility that you might find your bliss” (Dorsey & Galinsky, 52).

Conclusion

The energy legislation going through Congress in 2007 ignores the IPCC recommendations that policies should be evaluated based on environmental costs and distributional effects. It also ignores the recommendation that policies should advance efficiency first and then production. Congress’ priorities are almost opposite of what the IPCC recommends and the results will be a great amount of waste and continued inequity.

There is an immediate need for Congress to invest in the country’s social capital and redistribute wealth through community energy service corporations. Not investing in this capital would be a major market failure. Public sector leadership is imperative to achieve sustainable development. The government has a critical interest in funding a widespread energy service campaign to encourage efficiency and lifestyle changes. It is important to our nation’s stability, our security, and will produce much greater economic benefits than most any other policy option.

The opportunity and challenge is for the public to pressure Congress to develop better legislation during this fifty-year long energy transition. There are significant economic and non-material incentives for everyone to be actively involved throughout these momentous times. If the public were to ever become involved in the policy process, it is now. 2007 marks year one in the American climate change transition and there is still time for much needed public input. However, this does not seem likely at the present time. Perhaps this could come about if the established climate networks were to mobilize their membership in making the recommendations I presented above. Whether or not this happens will have wide reaching consequences.

A redistribution of wealth would involve taking at least $1 trillion from the wealthiest 10%, about $1 trillion from the U.S. military (money that the Pentagon itself has identified as waste), eliminating the for-profit public service contracts (above), and a heavy progressive or graduated income tax. -Erik Phillips-Nania 1/19/08

There is still $100 trillion worth of oil the ground, priced at $100 per barrel, which is a significant underestimation. This is a huge incentive for the oil industry, the car industry, our corrupt government, and others, to do everything they can to make us stay dependent on oil. (source: Who Killed the Electric Car?) -Erik Phillips-Nania 1/19/08

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