Yves here. It should come as no surprise that the Democratic party plans for taking on climate change are grossly inadequate.
By Michael Hoexter, a policy analyst and marketing consultant on green issues, climate change, clean and renewable energy, and energy efficiency. Originally published at New Economic Perspectives.
The Brexit vote is being taken by some commentators as a sign that the basic competence of leadership groups throughout Western countries is in question. Unfortunately not enough media attention has been paid, public concern raised, and action taken about the most massive and long-standing failure of the political leadership classes, a failure to protect by governments that threatens humanity itself. Governments and government leaders have failed to lead on climate change, even as most recently in Paris, they have sworn to hold Earth’s surface temperature below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels and target 1.5 degrees as the “optimal” goal. This failure of leadership both in governments and also in the nongovernmental organizations that nominally address environment and climate is almost absolute and is terrifying to behold.
2016 is on track to become by far the warmest year on record globally with a combination of a strong El Nino plus global warming boosting temperatures far above 2015, last year, the warmest year so far in instrumental records. February 2016 was already 1.35 degrees C above current “normal” and close to 2 degrees over pre-industrial. Warming gases already emitted into the atmosphere with a residence time in the atmosphere of decades (methane) and millennia (carbon dioxide) have not yet exerted their maximal effect on global temperatures, as these excess emissions will continue to capture a greater fraction of incoming infrared radiation from the sun for a long time to come (the greenhouse effect). Shortly, positive feedback loops may be triggered that add buried or sunken natural stores of methane to the atmosphere which will radically intensify infrared absorption and further bake the earth’s surface. It is unlikely that human civilizations and perhaps humanity will survive the 3.5 degree C plus world that is almost inevitable with current or even moderately curtailed emissions trends.
The US is second largest emitter of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, with China being the largest overall. The US has however 3 times the per-person emissions of China and many Chinese aspire to the lifestyle not of a bicycle-riding Dane but of an American suburbanite. Also 25% of China’s emissions can be attributed to its export of goods to the rest of the world, though its lead over the US still remains after attributing these emissions elsewhere. The US is by far the most populous of the very high per capita greenhouse gas emitting countries, those countries that emit 15 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide or more per person, numbers that don’t include non-carbon dioxide GHG’s like methane or emissions from international air and ship travel. The US is still the dominant though challenged military-political force in the world, projecting its power via the copious use of fossil fuels to power weapons delivery systems like planes, drones, and ships to all corners of the globe. The mission of the US military, as its jets and aircraft carriers emit copious amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, is often to maintain enhanced access to fossil fuel reserves for the US and its European allies.
A decisive move to prevent climate catastrophe by our now-global, 84% fossil-fuel dependent civilization, depends in part upon decisions that US political leaders make within the next year or two.
Of the two major parties in the US, the Democratic Party is the only one that acknowledges the existence of anthropogenic global warming, though “acknowledges” must be qualified, which I will attempt below. The Republican Party and its presumptive Presidential nominee Donald Trump deny that global warming exists and/or that it is in any way a problem worthy of attention by government policymakers. The Republican Party is one of the few major political parties in the world that deny human-caused climate change.
Benchmarking the climate change policy perspective of any party, be it the Democratic Party or others, against the Republican Party’s views on climate change is an exercise in foolishness and self-destructiveness that unfortunately both the Democrats and non-governmental environmental and climate organizations continue to attempt. No political or climate policy credibility should be gained by a policy proposal that is “better than” the Republican alternative, which is either non existent or entirely retrograde. Also, finding “middle ground” with climate change deniers on climate change is like cutting a deal with your senile Uncle Miltie that he should wander into traffic only part of the time.
At this point in history, cutting imaginary deals (none are usually forthcoming) or preemptive compromises with climate change deniers means departing from the stark reality of our current and worsening geophysical situation as regards warming emissions and the degradation of the climate and ocean chemistry in large part from those emissions. We must now be positioning ourselves in relationship to the “object” of policy itself rather than to the views of opponents that are not sufficiently grounded in both natural science and the most plausible socio-economic tools for fixing the problem.
What is required now of government leaders is a full-scale, society-wide mobilization of economic, social and political resources to rapidly (within a decade) change the energy basis of civilizations, all of this led and supervised by governments. A government-organized and –financed multi-year mobilization has always been the option that was necessary at some point to transform our societies away from our increasingly deadly dependence on fossil fuels. Yet in the fog of neoliberal economic and political reasoning, government leaders and non-governmental organizations have not been able to conceive of, let alone undertake the transition away from a fossil-fueled to a largely or completely renewable energy powered society.
Working within the aforementioned neoliberal fog based on neoclassical economic assumptions has meant that climate action advocates both within and outside of government have tended to avoid discussion of what positive contributions government action can make to the economy and to climate action. Without an acknowledgement of these potentials of the institution of government there can be no formulation of an effective climate action political platform. Hewing to neoliberal assumptions, the emphasis is always on government effects on markets in the private sector, which are assumed via theory to encompass the entire economy; to have a “market-based” policy or policy suggestion is always assumed to be “good” or “realistic” even when it isn’t. Those non-governmental organizations and environmental groups that are focused on government policy have operated almost entirely in the realm of what “price on carbon” should be instituted, be it a straight carbon tax, a carbon fee and dividend or, the most popular with government officials but extremely complex, the cap and trade system of pollution permit auctioning.
Another part of the non-governmental climate action community has been focused on saying “NO” to various fossil fuel industry projects or investment in fossil fuel companies. Advocates of “NO” policies, though they are morally and practically justified in saying “NO” often don’t ever arrive at pushing for exactly what government policy should be doing to change our way of life so we do not depend on fossil fuels. I attribute the inordinate emphasis on “NO” to a climate movement that un-self-consciously assumes a fundamental and fatal fallibility of government that the still-dominant neoliberal view of society has inculcated in government officials and civil society more generally.
Given this unfortunate background history to date, in the political confrontation with the GOP and climate deniers more generally, climate action advocates must undertake an entirely different strategy to be at all effective. They must re-evaluate or reframe rather than run away from the accusations of the paranoid and opportunistic neoliberal and climate-denier groups that run the Republican Party. These factions in the GOP and on the fringes of the right-wing say that climate change is simply a pretext to collectivize society along lines of the now discredited Soviet model; for the purposes of supporting their extreme or extremely naïve ideology they erase away any inconvenient aspects of physical science that get in the way of their cartoonish but feverishly held beliefs.
The neoliberal “common sense” that government leadership and initiative, including expansion of government programs, is always inefficient and tyrannical is simply without foundation in reality. The denigration of government in its entirety should be dismissed as ill-conceived myth-making in the service of an ideological Never-Never Land of yeoman capitalists, from whom all value springs and who are encumbered by government. These mythical capitalists, as in an Ayn Rand novel, would, in this fantasy of the economy, NEVER damage the social fabric or the natural environment in the search for individual or firm advantages and profit. Against this repackaged anti-Communism from the mid-20th Century, an oppressive Soviet-style society is highly unlikely to ever again be put in place if government and civil society can work together to solve our most pressing problems, guided by and not looking away from real world data, under government leadership and regulation. In partial fulfillment of the paranoid fantasies of climate change deniers, who claim to live in the yeoman capitalist Never-Never Land, humanity needs to embrace closer cooperation and engage in many collective efforts led by governments to save itself. If you are contemplating human self-rescue, there are no easy reassurances for ideologically-driven or delusional climate change deniers, nor should there be.
With the emergence of what is to be a full-scale climate emergency, the embrace of half-measures whether out of ignorance, out of fealty to misbegotten neoliberal ideology/neoclassical economics or out of fear of rabid climate deniers, is itself a form of climate and science denial. This fashionable form of “green” climate denial that can be spoken in liberal salons and party meetings, wrings its hands about “Republican Congressional gridlock” and climate denial and holds up the meager climate-related achievements of the current and previous Presidential Administrations as holy writ. Talk is limited to various measures that do not suggest a leading role for government office-holders and government in pointing the way to the post-fossil fuel future. Nothing that inconveniences the consumer or corporations is discussed at any length out of fear or a thoughtless repetition of tired received wisdom.
The Draft Democratic Platform Minimizes the Crisis
While usually American political party platforms are considered almost a joke, this year, the process of making the Democratic platform has been politicized and is a focus of an important political struggle. The reason why party platforms have been considered inconsequential is that
- they are usually ignored by the public and
- officeholders are, once elected, free to abandon adherence to the platform without penalty.
American political parties are loose associations of officeholders in individual districts as opposed to tightly disciplined parties in parliamentary systems.
However, Party platforms are the one place, every four years, for American political parties to project a unified vision to the public at large, even if that vision is only used as an electioneering tool and not as a basis for policymaking. For the Democratic Party, as the leftward or supposedly “liberal” major Party, this means that the Platform would be a place where political ideals and plans, if they are at all tangential to upcoming policy initiatives, might be expressed.
Having won representation (five of 15 total members) on the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee, the Sanders campaign has made some valiant efforts to inject more progressive elements into the platform. The drafting committee is still dominated by appointees of Hillary Clinton and DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, though Wasserman-Schultz’s appointee Barbara Lee has voted sometimes with the Sanders appointees (Bill McKibben, Cornel West, Deborah Parker, James Zogby and Keith Ellison).
On the issue of climate change, the Sanders appointees have won some concessions or found agreement but also experienced some rebuffs from the Clinton and Wasserman-Schultz appointed majority. While the proposals of Sanders appointees were preferable on the whole to the resulting document, the July 1st draft would need further sharpening, even if Sanders appointees had won all battles and gotten everything they had proposed into the document. Below is an analysis of what is lacking in the current draft in order for the Democratic Party to be considered a party of effective climate action.
Preamble: Urgency is Not Really Communicated
The preamble to a Party Platform is the clearest sign of the priorities of the Drafting Committee or at least its majority faction. The body of a platform can list off planks ad infinitum but a preamble because of its limited length and summary function suggests what the Party actually believes are its top publishable priorities, by which it will “sell” itself in the upcoming election. There are also “unpublishable” priorities that usually involve serving wealthy donors and special interest groups but a Platform is only going to be addressed to the broader public. In an ideally uncorrupted political system, ALL of the priorities of a political party would be expressed in a Platform and discussed publicly.
The overarching theme of the Platform Draft, and therefore the differentiator that Democrats would like to communicate to the electorate and Washington insiders, is the idea of that Democrats promote being “stronger together than apart”.
Democrats believe that cooperation is better than conflict, unity is better than division, empowerment is better than resentment, and bridges are better than walls.
It’s a simple but powerful idea: we are stronger together.
The Democrats are, unobjectionably, attempting to claim for themselves the mantle of the Party of social interconnection and togetherness.
The July 1st draft of the Democratic Platform Preamble has 1143 words in it of which approximately 50 words are devoted to or allude indirectly to an ongoing climate crisis. 43 words in one paragraph starting approximately at the 600th word of the Preamble are explicitly about climate change:
Democrats believe that climate change poses a real and urgent threat to our economy, our national security, and our children’s health and futures, and that Americans deserve the jobs and security that come from becoming the clean energy superpower of the 21st century.
I don’t find anything to disagree with the wording of this general statement but as implied in my introduction to it, it is a small fraction, 1/26th of the words in the preamble. While one can infer that this belief of Democrats about climate change is related to the main interconnectedness theme from its placement in a list of the liberal/progressive concerns that dominate the preamble, the climate change part, as do other parts, seems to be part of a laundry list.
The only other mention of something related to climate change occurs in the first paragraph, where in touting the achievements of the Obama Administration, though these are also called insufficient, there is a mention of
We are getting more of our energy from the sun and wind, and importing less oil from overseas
Lumping sun and wind energy with the tangentially related issue of importation of oil without mention of climate change is perhaps trivializing but, as this is within a description of the Democratic Party’s near past, I will not engage with it.
Overall, then, you might expect a Party with a platform such as this one to expend about 1/20th of its political capital on issues related to climate change. That Party then would propose federal budgets within which at most 1/20th of the approximately $1.2 trillion discretionary spending budget for all expenditures to projects related to climate change at $60 billion dollars or much less. Given that military expenditures dominate the discretionary spending budget (54% in 2015) those climate expenditures would be expected to be far lower than 1/20th of the federal discretionary budget according to the weighting in this preamble.
Recommended Preamble Section on Climate Action
Though admitting the seriousness of climate change in the abstract, the sense of urgency in addressing climate change is missing in the draft preamble, even as the words “urgent threat” are inserted. As an unprecedented mobilization of resources will be a defining characteristic of an Administration and society facing climate catastrophe fully, the preamble must mention in a central place, the full-scale social and political mobilization required to stabilize the climate within a decade and stop destabilizing emissions into the future. Any US federal government budget that doesn’t allocate upwards of 4 trillion dollars per year (the current total budget of the US federal government is $3 Trillion dollars, the US economy is in total around $17 Trillion dollars in GDP including federal spending) on transforming our infrastructure and built environment to rapidly reduce and eliminate the use of fossil fuels is not seriously confronting climate change. That is a lot of money but the US Federal government can create as much or as little money as is politically determined, with the sole economic constraint of inflation if government expenditure generates too much demand for goods and services in short supply. The idea that the federal government runs or is running out of a money is an unfortunate political fiction, all the more unfortunate at a time of still-unrecognized national emergency.
Therefore the preamble of the Party Platform should after touting the achievements of the Obama Administration in the second paragraph, include the following language starting the third paragraph:
Despite progress in some areas over the past 8 years, we are faced with twin challenges: not only are many Americans falling behind or left out of prosperity and a sense of social belonging but also we have not yet fully faced our greatest challenge: the imminent danger of catastrophic climate change. We Democrats think though, as in facing the Great Depression, World War II and the superpower competition with the Soviet Union, the fundamental solutions to our multiple large-scale social problems should and must be addressed through the work of Americans and government together. We Democrats believe that the best solution to our multiple sustainability dilemmas involves creating by government financial instruments, which have always been at our disposal, a full employment economy that pushes our society within a decade to a post-fossil fuel economy where everybody participates in just, equitable reward and also, for a time, shared sacrifice.
As part of a great mobilization to save our American civilization from likely destruction from eventual famine, flood, drought, or other climate-related calamities, we must via a combination of replacing fossil energy with renewable energy, energy efficiency improvements, and conservation reduce annually our global warming emissions by 10% or more per year until they are at zero within less than a decade. We can do this by building an all-electric energy infrastructure powered by renewable energy that also uses energy and resources wisely. As we have done in the past, government initiative and finance will help individuals, families, businesses and nonprofit public service agencies create together a livable prosperous future for all Americans. Government leaders will also ask for reasonable sacrifices or conservation efforts such as choosing to ride bicycles on safe bike routes rather than drive, which may also function as life enhancing options. The achievement of targets of a 10% reduction in emissions per year over a period of 10 years will create a net zero emissions society. A list of some initiatives follows:
- Declaration of a national climate emergency and an accompanying national discussion of climate solutions and sacrifices for the benefit of the young and future generations.
- A renewable energy smart supergrid to enable renewable energy to replace 24/7 fossil fuel electricity generation and tap into a wide variety of energy sources from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
- Electric roadways and electric vehicle charging infrastructure to enable our vehicles to use renewable energy to move about
- A continental high-speed rail and maglev rail system to enable an emissions-free long-distance travel across North America
- Retrofitting existing buildings and building new buildings that require little energy input to remain comfortable in heat and cold
- Creating an electric-bus, electric-rail and safe bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in urban and suburban areas to create mobility options beyond the personal (electric) vehicle, reduce congestion and increase overall health.
- Creating an agricultural and forestry system that pulls more carbon out of the air while providing nourishing foods and useful sustainable materials for a variety of uses.
- A Job Guarantee that enables all Americans to work in the transition to a sustainable energy economy or in supplying necessary services during that transition
- Shape markets and business decisions by a stable carbon tax starting at $80 per metric tonne and rising $10/year
We as Democrats believe that we will build on our tradition of working together to help ensure that our children and grandchildren will enjoy the same or better prospects that we have enjoyed. That starts now with ensuring that the natural basis of our wealth is not destroyed by our current dependence on fossil fuels.
The preamble could then continue discussing other issues of concern but the relative emphasis of the climate mobilization (520 words) in the context of an approximately 1200 word preamble would be more appropriate to the task at hand. At that point, Democrats or a Democratic President asking for appropriations in the order of trillions of dollars per annum for these efforts would not come as a surprise.
Draft Climate Change Planks – Not Rapid Enough & Without a Sure Mechanism
The July 1st Draft’s 965 word climate change section with planks has some language that has upped some of the ambition in contrast to current very low standards in contemporary political discourse regarding climate but is neither ambitious enough nor effective enough to be considered a serious solution to the problem that it summarizes in the beginning. This, as mentioned above, is the dominant, unconscious narrative in climate change policy and advocacy: a severe problem with the climate is diagnosed and then an inadequate solution is offered. In this the drafters of this section cannot be held up as particularly out of touch but only reflective of a dominant discourse that is out of touch with reality. Furthermore, as we know from reports, Sanders representatives’ efforts to sharpen this section have been excised from the current draft.
The section is titled “Combat Climate Change, Build a Clean Energy Economy, and Secure Environmental Justice”. Nothing objectionable is here in this introduction though, in comparison to the scope of the challenge, the laundry list approach to listing ethical goods lacks passion and drive. What is required of political leaders in the fight against climate change is deep inspiration, not “covering the bases” of a pre-established list of right-thinking liberal causes, that can be easily put aside at a moment’s notice.
Then comes a “statement of the problem” which is also not objectionable though vague in the details. Listed are some of the contemporary effects of climate change and prediction that these will get worse in the future. The draft then calls for “ambitious, immediate action” or else things will get a lot worse. Here one needs to know how “ambitious” and how “immediate” the action will be. Rightly, the moral call not to leave children with a “profoundly damaged” planet follows.
The next paragraph contains some specific targets that are not rapid enough given the above diagnosis and the diagnosis offered here. This again follows the well-worn narrative path of most climate advocacy today: offering inadequate solutions for monumental social and increasingly climatological problems. The call is for 100% “clean energy” by “mid-century” and at the same time a cut of emissions from 2005 levels by 80% by 2050. “Bold steps” are promised and good jobs are also promised. A tradeoff between jobs and a clean environment is dismissed, as it should be under the right policy. Democrats are said to be committed to President Obama’s pledge to keep global temperatures below 2 degrees C and hopefully below 1.5 degrees C.
The problem here is that a large carbon budget is being allowed by the commitment to achieve 80% reduction of emissions in 33 years. This means that there will be 40 plus years of additional greenhouse gas emissions from the US economy and government when the climate system is now already approaching the 1.5-2.0 degree limits without additional emissions. If a government is serious about combatting climate change, there should be almost no national carbon budget left, except for activities that yield a net-zero producing economy (think machines/tractors required to erect wind turbines for instance). Foreseeing and allowing 20% of current or 2005 net carbon emissions 3 or 4 decades hence is self-defeating before one even starts to seriously fight climate change. These are all unexceptional “terms of art” in the area of climate change promises and projections but they are also critically out of step or perhaps misinformed with regard to the geophysical reality of already too much heat and heat-trapping gases in the climate system. This is Augustine of Hippo saying “Lord grant me chastity, but not yet”.
“Clean Energy Economy” Planks
What follows is a two-paragraph list of sentence-length or phrase-length planks some of which are more specific, some more vague commitments to do a variety of “green” or emissions-cutting initiatives. The mechanisms for achieving these goals is unclear and the goals themselves are, as above, generally inadequate or too vague to test their adequacy as goals. If viewed in contrast to Republican ideas about climate change or the environment, they will sound somewhat progressive. However, as above, when measured against the stark reality of a rapidly warming world with changing geochemistry, caused by human activity, these promises can seem weak and could easily be brushed aside.
As we need to be at or near net zero emissions within a decade, a promise in one plank, for instance, to generate 50% of electricity from vaguely defined “clean” energy sources is both insufficient and rife with “wiggle room” for greenwashing or bad energy accounting. Electricity generation accounts for around 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, and “clean” might include natural gas, in which case that would still contribute to global warming.
Another bland plank/sentence states:
“We will cut energy waste in American homes, schools, hospitals, and offices; modernize our electric grid; and make American manufacturing the cleanest and most efficient in the world.”
Here, there are no concrete targets and therefore no accountability, with trite phrases that function simply as bromides in the “green” energy and energy efficiency discourse space. Without concrete targets, techniques and mechanisms this is all feel-good rhetoric and nothing else. There are reiterations of existing “green” federal policies that include increasing energy efficiency standards that are reviewed, every so many years anyway.
Newer and more interesting from the point of view of a net-zero emitting society though still vague is:
by building bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure across our urban and suburban areas.
This could be made more stringent and specific and it lacks a funding mechanism or commitment.
More specific is this change to the tax code:
Democrats believe the tax code must reflect our commitment to a clean energy future by eliminating special tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuel companies
And following is a vague recommitment to the (inefficient, insufficient, but for the most part “better than nothing”) renewable energy incentives in the tax code
as well as defending and extending tax incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy.
An unenforceable vague statement of good intention regarding government operations captures the stance of the majority of the Democratic Program Drafting Committee and probably the Clinton campaign itself:
And we believe that the federal government should lead by example, which is why we will take steps to power the government with 100 percent clean electricity.
“Take steps”, no deadlines and no definition of “clean” all communicate the opposite of bold and decisive.
There are more vague and fairly timid reiterations of the greener aspects of the Obama Presidency, including his decision not to permit the Keystone XL pipeline. However, the Clinton representatives on the Drafting Committee did not allow Obama’s “climate-test”, used by Obama as the rationale to refuse the KXL permit, to be the standard for future energy projects, which was pressed for by Sanders appointee Bill McKibben.
Overall, the positioning of the “Clean Energy Economy” planks is a continuation of US federal energy policy under Democratic Administrations with some minor edits. There is no discontinuity or disruption in the direction of effective climate action to stabilize the climate. The climate remains a political touchstone to be addressed among a list of other concerns.
“Environmental and Climate Justice” Planks
Two more paragraphs are devoted to a variety of issues related to justice and injustice in pollution as well as differential impacts of any shift away from coal on coal mining communities. This section seems to be a response to and attempt to recruit parts of the climate movement focused on issues of environmental justice, that has been, I think misleadingly, rebranded as “climate” justice.
The climate justice movement points out the differential impacts of climate change according to mostly racial but occasionally economic differentiations. While pointing out differential impacts among ethnic, racial and economic groups in the current generation is morally justified, it obscures the larger injustice in our unfolding climate catastrophe between generations; in my experience the “climate justice” concept is a comfortable way to fold the climate catastrophe into the familiar inherited categories of the Old, New, and now intersectionalist liberal/Left. Most alarmingly, the tendency of the recent “Left” or left-liberals to embrace those divisions between people that have biological markers (race, gender) against those that are non-biological (class), and therefore (the economic ones being) more tractable to government policy, means that these activists create a self-limiting program of government initiatives or simply excoriate government policies and actions of corporations rather than present working solutions. There seems to be a love for a self-imposed straitjacket of inaction yet continuous moral denunciations, because, in this case, no policy solutions are offered that also address the universal human problem of too much greenhouse gases and eventual heat in the climate system. It is good if we address racism but we should also not be neglecting our common interests either. The latter should be a matter of common sense but apparently to some activists, I have encountered, it has not been in the recent past.
The first paragraph of this section is cleverly written from a political point of view because it attempts to link two somewhat different types of differential impact related tangentially to climate. In the first part of the paragraph, the Flint water crisis and impacts on indigenous communities are addressed though no programmatic solutions are offered. These are meant to be calls to mobilized communities of color around various environmental justice issues. A general statement.
Simply put, this is environmental racism.
offers perhaps a glimpse into some efforts by a future Justice Department to bring lawsuits against polluters. Again, no concrete commitments are made but it is a good sentiment that shows at least some worthwhile political commitments in the abstract.
The clever move then comes when the focus shifts mid-paragraph coal-mining communities (mostly white) who are both environmentally challenged and also an affected by climate policy (though the switch to natural gas that has effected American coal communities the most cannot be called an effective climate policy). It is a concern what will happen to coal mining communities IF a government fully embraces climate action, but this hasn’t really happened yet. More likely this is a signal that Democrats will follow in the footsteps of Obama’s Clean Power Plan which targets reducing coal generation and Democrats will attempt to provide a soft landing for these communities. This is a continuation of a gradualist status quo that is insufficient for our need to transition directly off fossil fuels to renewable energy.
There is here in this paragraph a laudable impulse to unite people of all races around environmental injustice but at the same time, the insertion of this section most likely functions as a means to pacify some of the more organized constituencies in the environmental justice and labor movements that might cause political embarrassment if alienated by the Presidential campaign and nominee. Whether this dual call would satisfy partisans/activists in either movement or group remains to be seen.
Also very measured is in the second paragraph of this section a call to investigate “corporate fraud” by fossil fuel companies with regard to their funding of climate denial. This is a step forward in terms of a strategy with regard to the judicial branch but it also is litigating the past to a large extent. This is not a forthright program to shut down the fossil fuel industry but merely to contain it more scrupulously within existing corporate law. The first sentence is a relatively toothless call to corporations to disclose climate risk to their shareholders. In both cases, the assumption is that “climate justice” is only in relation to shareholders and not the public at large. This is not a foundation for any reasonable climate policy that might instead, for instance, nationalize and shutdown fossil fuel companies. There is not expansive concept of “protecting the public” and future generations from the depredations of our own fossil fuel habit and its corporate sponsors.
The Draft “Public Lands and Waters” Section
The final section of the draft is a “Public Lands and Waters” section, of two paragraphs, the first of which deals with general environmental issues. The second contains some laudable impulses to stop drilling for fossil fuels in some areas, while limiting a potential ban with some “reasonable” language that compromises with fossil fuel interests and our fossil fuel habit.
The fossil fuel banning language starts off bold:
We oppose drilling in the Arctic and off the Atlantic coast
But then loses conviction in the next phrase:
and believe we need to reform fossil fuel leasing on public lands.
“Reforming” is not banning, limiting or prohibiting. There is a failure of nerve here that is typical of much of the document. The next and last sentence in the climate and environment section contains a compromise type word regarding “phase out”
We can phase down extraction of fossil fuels from our public lands, starting with the most polluting sources, while making our public lands and waters engines of the clean energy economy and creating jobs across the country.
Why not say “we will” phase out extraction of fossil fuels? Why “can”? Who are the Democrats hesitating for? Whose “OK” do Democrats need to phase it out? The emphasis again on “most polluting sources” is something of a retreat from climate to old-style environmentalism (that unfortunately is too common in the “climate” movement as well). Of course if you take care of two problems at once by focusing on local and global pollution, all the better, but there is missing still in political commonsense the notion that any and all fossil carbon emissions are pollution.
Recommended Edits to the Climate and Energy Planks
Here are top policy priorities for an actually effective climate policy which can replace or supplement existing planks.
- Declaration of a Climate Emergency. While there is the potential for abuse of an emergency declaration, there is no substitute for recognizing that climate action is not a patch on our existing energy-related social arrangements but a thoroughgoing effort to eliminate excess greenhouse gas emissions rapidly. Climate action is the paramount priority of government and of the American public. Political rights must be maintained, in part because that is the foundation of the American Republic, but also because the effort to stabilize the climate must fully harness the creativity and good will of the public throughout.
- Climate and Sustainability Public Awareness Program. Some Americans are preoccupied with climate change and some put it out of their minds or are unsure of the basic science. The federal government in cooperation with educators, writers, and entertainers will create a campaign to explain the need for a full-scale transformation of the energy basis and resource-use patterns of our civilization through broadcast media and public events.
- 10×10=100% campaign (or a more ambitious 8×12.5=100%) that targets net-zero emissions within a decade or less (8 years at best). Each year the government will set a target of 10% emissions reductions from a combination of 1/3rd conservation of energy, 1/3rd energy efficiency improvements and 1/3rd replacement of fossil energy with renewable energy.
- Via a Department of Energy program, build a Smart Renewable Energy Electric Supergrid that balances renewable energy flows (mostly wind, solar, and clean energy storage from sun and existing hydroelectric) with energy demand throughout the day (electricity most often must be generated just before its used). Power will be transported from where it is generated to where it is needed, enabling the replacement of fossil fuel generating stations.
- Continental High Speed and Maglev Rail System, enabling rapid cross-continental and intercity travel using renewable energy.
- Electrify Interstates and arterial road system. Via overhead or pavement embedded electrical transmission equipment, electric vehicles and trucks can be charged as they move, minimizing the requirement for on-board electrical storage.
- High Performance Building Program – Using a combination of zero-interest energy efficiency loans and grants, the federal government will help finance a massive renovation and rebuilding of American buildings to be very low energy and comfortable with little energy input, after the Passive House Standard that is growing now in international popularity.
- Carbon Sequestration Program in Forests and Agricultural Practices
- Emergency Cooling Program – Develop treaties that enable coordinated efforts to keep the earth cool as emissions are slowed and stopped
As time is short, I will refer to readers to these documents I have written over the last couple years in which some of the ideas that should appear in a Democratic Platform that would actually “care” about climate action:
Why Shouldn’t the US Federal Government Invest $4-$6 Trillion Per Year on Climate Protection?
A US Climate Platform: Anchoring Climate Policy to Reality
In a subsequent post, I will discuss the positioning of a Democratic Party that seriously cared about climate change versus a party of climate denial such as the GOP led by Donald Trump or another candidate.
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Disagree wrt the premises that political party affiliation has anything to do with AGW… as both are fundamentalist econnomicly neoliberal… aka only the market can decide humanities fate… oh and the other stuff too…
“Shortly, positive feedback loops may be triggered that add buried or sunken natural stores of methane to the atmosphere which will radically intensify infrared absorption and further bake the earth’s surface.”
Methane hydrates are already being released, and this is only one of many self-reinforcing feedbacks that have been triggered.
We are past the point of “fixing the problem.” There is no possible way to replace fossil fuels and still maintain industrial civilization to support the (growing) population. Even if there were, it is too late to prevent runaway heating.
Homo Sapiens is madly headed for extinction and will take most other species down with it. Get used to it.
“..maintain industrial civilization to support the (growing) population.”
This is the crux of the issue, the world cannot sustain a population of 7billion let alone 9, population control through birth rate controls would do more to curb global warming than any other method long term, while having positive cascading effects in other environmental areas.
Ahhh! (pulls hair, at article not comment) green/clean energy does not exist. Solar panels have just reached carbon neutral, they take as much carbon to produce as they save (this doesn’t take into effect the massive amounts of damaging acids they need in production). Wind is carbon negative when mining and production carbon outputs are included, and of course nuclear powerplants are less carbon efficient than coal plants when plant production, mining, and storage, carbon costs are included. these items lead to energy diversification NOT carbon savings.
More public transportation and energy savings by individuals (and infrastructure to support It) is definitely a step in the right direction, but population issues still rear their ugly head.
Birth rate controls, massive education on the negative effects on rampant consumerism (make excess consumption taboo) and global wealth redistribution are the only effective ways to curb global warming.
It’s much easier to think we can just build some solar farms and turbines and carbon emissions will disappear but technology is not going to save us.
The solutions are hard and Everyone (especially the 10% when it comes to wealth inequality) must make sacrifices if the world isn’t going to turn into an unlivable furnace. Green energy as it currently exists is not the answer (its not even a solution). It’s to bad likely none of the hard but effective solutions will pursued, it’s just so much easier to think you can slap up some solar panels and make almost no changes to our lifestyle and the makeup of society.
The human population is much too high on our finite planet. Despite the completely obvious nature of this truth, vast numbers of people are in denial. Some have religious reasons, and most religions are at fault, even though there are individual members of these religions who are trying to do something about this vast problem. It’s very difficult to argue with religious advocates of population growth; they’re immersed in magical thinking, and expect their god or gods will protect them.
Others are in denial because of political correctness, such as believing that because the U.S. had the Baby Boom from 1946-1964, so it’s only fair that Third World countries now have their own baby boom. Totally ridiculous, because high population numbers are so destructive, but there really are people who believe it.
Then there’s the reasoning of billionaire oligarchs and corporate executives. More people means more customers, and it also means there will be a much larger pool of potential employees, which will keep wages down. This is short term thinking at its worst. When the inevitable collapse comes, it will be very, very bad for business.
The future is indeed bleak.
Amen.
Yet, even if we found the courage to act, almost all the solutions are incredibly stupid. Like drastically increasing emissions for years to build out all this infrastructure using fossil fuels only to hit a wall. Oh damn, we ran out of rare earth minerals! Oh crap, there’s not enough copper left. My personal favorite: how do we replace cement? What about many of the industrial processes we take for granted with concentrated energy for which there is no equivalent using “renewables”? On and on the unresolved or unresolvable issues go. This is why it was important to research and develop these solutions 20/30 years ago. But to do that, we would have had to take the scientists seriously. Instead, we punted. And we continue to drag our feet.
Bye bye civilization.
Solar panels have just reached carbon neutral, they take as much carbon to produce as they save (this doesn’t take into effect the massive amounts of damaging acids they need in production). Wind is carbon negative when mining and production carbon outputs are included
what’s your source for that?
Not necessarily extinction: nobody has enough data to make that prediction credibly. A major population crash seems virtually certain and all too likely to be accompanied by even more ugliness than we are already seeing, though its precise scope also lies beyond the reach of reliable prediction at this stage. Whether it ends with the extinction of the species seems almost immaterial. We all die anyway: it goes with the territory; and it is not clear that the continuance of the species will concern us once dead. To the extent we care now, we can try to make things a little better. Most of the actions that lie within my scope seem ludicrously inadequate, but at least they do lie within my scope and are probably better than nothing.
Gaylord: I believe that it was George Carlin who said that Homo sapiens was a good idea, and
it’s too bad that it didn’t turn out. And you’re correct; this world needs a long rest free of these
so-called human beings.
Skippy is correct. However, I add this concerning Establishment Democrats: Were you always this stupid or did you take lessons to reach this level of incompetence?
I suggest that stupidity/incompetence is not the problem.
It is simply that Establishment Democrats are willing to pay any price to help avoid climate change as long as it does not seriously change their or their family’s future lifestyle.
Then there is the problem that if much of the USA’s resources are spent on avoiding climate change and the effort is successful, then people will say “climate change was a hoax and the expenditure was a government boondoggle by the liberal greens”.
And if nothing is done, a good portion of the people will argue that “if we can put a man on the moon, technology will come to the rescue in climate change”.
It is difficult to see how political America will do anything, other than small band-aids involving well connected interest groups, about climate change.
In the words of Bush the elder, “It wouldn’t be (politically) prudent”.
well except ideology may aid and abet it, but it’s not really about ideology it’s about interests. Why the wealthy can’t figure out that the planet is also in their interest is hard to say.
As a retired Chemical Engineer who use to work for a major oil company I would like to say;
THANK YOU ! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
The math for climate change is basic thermodynamics from the 1880s and enough to scare the hell out of me. Thank you for putting it in context for the financial community.
I can appreciate the author’s call to urgent action, but am surprised at the list of “plank” recommendations. It’d be interesting to know the extent to which the author has discussed these options with other groups or people, when you consider the number of do-able ideas that weren’t listed, and the vague prescriptions (e.g., emergency cooling programs) that were listed.
Consider the sorts of omitted options which have little to no delay in implementation (in contrast to, say, a wholly new maglev system which would take many years to develop, manufacture and deploy). For example:
– Adopting new standards for 24 volt DC home-scale and neighborhood-scale electrical systems. This drops the “buy-in” price to double digits for small installations, yet can be extended to a neighborhood through scaling and upgrades. Recent DC-DC converters have become extremely efficient. DC-powered LED lighting is finally a mature technology, compared to the offerings of a decade ago. Solar, wind, and any other arbitrary source of electricity can feed into the system without the huge hassles of tying into power grids. There’s been plenty written about such 24 or 12 volt DC standards, but no forward movement.
Etc.
Separately, consider options for funding or incentives. For example:
– Funding hydrogen systems and storage research (e.g., hydrogen clathrate hydrates were a hot thing, like, a decade ago, but few outside the field seemed to care). Hydrogen power is already a do-able technology for barges and ships (where storage volume is not a big constraint). There’s just no forward movement on these matters. Hydrogen can be sourced from water (rather than from the worse choice — from methane) for a combination hydrogen/solar/wind land/sea system.
As mentioned, it’d be instructive to hear which options were considered but omitted from the list.
Jumping back in to belatedly say ‘thanks’ for the useful link to the Dem Party Platform Draft, and for the coverage of this topic.
The real answer.
Just stop.
Stop all of it now. It is a difficult and possibly unfathomable response however the likelihood of massive die offs, including us, is looking more probable. Possibly within our life spans and certainly within our children’s. Fortunately too, Politics is the biggest culprit. That is turning out to be our Achilles heel.
Start with basic survival, i.e. food. Spend all resources towards Permaculture. Bleed corporate resources to do it? I mean, this really is the only war worth fighting.
Yes. If we could only use the resources we have as a species.. we could do anything, we could solve any problem. So what internal and external forces are keeping us from that?
No turning back?
Ecosystems over time have endured much disturbance, yet they tend to remain intact, a characteristic we call resilience. Though many systems have been lost and destroyed, for systems that remain physically intact, there is debate as to whether changing temperatures will result in shifts or collapses. Wernburg et al. show that extreme warming of a temperate kelp forest off Australia resulted not only in its collapse, but also in a shift in community composition that brought about an increase in herbivorous tropical fishes that prevent the reestablishment of kelp. Thus, many systems may not be resilient to the rapid climate change that we face.
Science, this issue p. 169
Abstract
Ecosystem reconfigurations arising from climate-driven changes in species distributions are expected to have profound ecological, social, and economic implications. Here we reveal a rapid climate-driven regime shift of Australian temperate reef communities, which lost their defining kelp forests and became dominated by persistent seaweed turfs. After decades of ocean warming, extreme marine heat waves forced a 100-kilometer range contraction of extensive kelp forests and saw temperate species replaced by seaweeds, invertebrates, corals, and fishes characteristic of subtropical and tropical waters. This community-wide tropicalization fundamentally altered key ecological processes, suppressing the recovery of kelp forests.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6295/169
Disheveled Marsupial… file under EMH failure to process information… sorta like the Clinton e-mails…
As a minor sidelight to the issue of global warming and what to do about it, I can’t help but mention something that personally causes me a lot of pain: farmers are tilling fields past the edge of the field. The wasteful tillage practices that cause hedges and fence rows to be cleared so a few more square feet of land can be cultivated are contributing to global warming in a significant way. Too bad I don’t have any numbers but there is a great deal of sadness and depression linked to the destruction of habitat as a result of ethanol production. In order to get every last dollar out of the land, farmers are destroying the interstitial spaces (between the fields) and the result is more runoff, less carbon sequestering and a landscape that looks like Orcs have taken over the land.
A drive through the countryside in many parts of Michigan will allow the reader to see what I am talking about. Or go on Google maps (earth view) and look at the area on both sides of the “thumb” around Bay City. Miles and miles and miles of row crops. Sad.
This article says what I wanted to say more succinctly and thoroughly.
In America, biofuels mainly means alcohol from corn. That can be diminished by attacking it from two directions. Subsidies to corn grown for alcohol can be abolished. The EPA requirement that all gasoline sold in America contain some percent of ethyl alcohol can be legislatively rescinded, outlawed and cancelled.
No more push, no more pull. The steady wind-down and extermination of the corn gasohol boondoggle. And the slowdown of corn gasohol boondoggle-driven carbon skydumping.
Overturning the law that requires that all gasoline sold in the US to contain some percent of ethyl alcohol is a good idea, and do-able.
The gist of the article is to advocate ending the present ethanol from crops. It’s just not worth it and has the negative offset of causing environmental degradation. Growers should be disincentivized from growing biofuels like corn.
I particularly appreciated the second recommendation on Hoexter’s list of suggested policy priorities WRT climate change, which is to increase public awareness.
This issue is unique in human history. It couldn’t have been more carefully crafted to take advantage of flaws in our human wetware if it had been done intentionally. IMO this issue is as much about human psychology, and our attachment to inertia and controlling economic resources, as it is about the lack of political leadership and neoliberal socio-economic ideology.
Both the time scale of the climate change processes and the socio-economic adaptations that are necessary to address them have been and remain longer than a human generation, at least until an irreversible threshold is crossed. Accordingly, despite the “urgent threat” language Hoexter cites in the Platform preamble, and the science, there is little real sense of urgency being conveyed or felt to address this issue.
I can think of a way to increase the awareness of some people to the onrushing threat of man made global warming. And that would be to cancel any Federal Involvement or Taxpayer Support to flood insurance. If that is too bitter a pill, then at least cancel it for all land areas built on since whenever global warming is considered to have gotten strongly under way, because that would be when sea level first started rising and higher incidence of global warming super raindump events began making traditional maps of 50 year/ 100 year/ 500 year flood zones obsolete.
When people can’t get flood/storm/etc. insurance or have their insurance cancelled because they now live in an Uninsurability Zone, then they will be feeling global warming’s real impact on their monetized personal lives.
I believe there are solutions, but the real solutions require human beings to work together, as a single species. And that requires that we get over what divides us, the racial, political, national, cultural, sexual, religious, and whatever other boundaries we cling to, whether through stubbornness or outside manipulation. If humanity can do that, if we can see that problems of some of us are the problems of all of us, then I know deep in my bones that we can do anything. We can survive this crisis of our adolescence and emerge looking forward to our collective future as a mature and self aware species.
That’s why I see the Internet as such an important tool because it exists beyond all of these boundaries. It is a sign of what is possible, and also it is bringing forward the Beast in us what wills us back into the primordial ooze. Bringing it out into the open, where it can be seen, and finally shed as a part of our evolutionary heritage we don’t need anymore. Together, we can defeat the oppression that is on us all, and put the elite in their rightful place, which is one us, one of us.
That’s my vision and my hope. There is still time. I ain’t subscribing to no doomer porn. That somehow makes it all inevitable, and therefore ok that we exterminate ourselves. Fuck that shit. You can go ahead and lay down in that grave. At the same time.. reading this article, the thinking it describes is so far removed from the vision, and from sanity, that our chances do not look good. Our head-in-ass condition may very well be terminal. At the very least it looks like some very big shakeups are going to be needed before things really click for us, if they ever do. Whether we live or die I am anticipating.. a lot more collective suffering.
How bad does it have to get, before we become willing to do whatever it takes to survive.. whatever it takes to love one another?
Mac said a struggle with the environment is not enough to make a nation.
Who can be blamed?
The plan is blame China. Steel dumpers ruined air in California.
Electric Army is planned,but meantime nuke subs will do.
China will be nuked reducing pop.
Cooling achieved.
Jobs returned placates surprised voters.
Or International Engineers party builds their own super bombs of some new design and announce technology & system either done as Barry Kommaner demands or his subs blow all cities over 5 million up.
Or apocalyptic riot and some few survive in Montevideo.
I have told Engineering students the better speak before spoken to as leaders are not wise enough to ask for help.
. . . civilization itself is a heat engine. And the only way to turn off the heating of the earth is to terminate civilization.
Do we have to make some compromises? Definitely, yes. Do we have to go back the stone age? We don’t have to do that. I mean that option is always on the table. We can go right the hell back to the stone age, if we choose.
A small amount of excess heat production is no problem. There is a lot of loss through re-radiation at night. The problem with continuing excess greenhouse gas production is that it locks in a increasingly huge amount of excess heating through blocking re-radiation, long after the initial energy extraction was mostly wasted.
http://climatekids.nasa.gov/greenhouse-effect/
The 1% are hoping to be the survivors of Climate Change.
All they need is a functioning set of self replicating robots, to cater to their every whim.