Making Connections

We know the human brain isn't great at conceptualizing time.  Events can simultaneously "feel like yesterday" and "like a lifetime ago."  With our busy day-to-day extreme events can fade from memory altogether - headline news, millions of people's lives forever changed.  This video helps remind us of what we've seen in the past few years -- the expected impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from years ago, decades ago, accumulating and now resulting in more frequent and extreme record-breaking weather events.



As a result of our inaction and lack of global leadership to reduce emissions over the past 20 years, more and more people in the scientific and sustainability communities are increasing their attention on adaptation - that is, recognizing that we've locked in significant impacts, how can we change our systems - agricultural, transportation, cities, energy - to handle the unpredictable impacts of climate disruption in the least painful way possible?

ICLEI's had an adaptation program since '06 and hosts an annual Resilient Cities event. Clean Air - Cool Planet's "Climate Preparedness" program also aims to help communities survive for more climate impacts.  The National Academies of Science has more resources and reports on adaptation.  The federal government recognizing the threat to Americans this poses, and requested an interagency report last year.     The threat climate disruption poses to the global economy and rich and poor people alike is clear to the Economist.  Business managers are increasingly being called on to evaluate how climate impacts will impact their business.  On Monday Fast Company ran a story titled "The 'New Normal' Weather."

That last piece is authored by Curt Stager, whose president at Paul Smith's College, John Mills, is serving on the Higher Education Climate Adaptation Committee - a group we've convened through the ACUPCC, made up of college and university presidents, scientists, and other experts to evaluate how our institutions of higher learning should be preparing society to be more resilient in an unstable future - through their education, research, operations, and community engagement.  (Stager's also got a new book out - Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth - which I'm about to dive into.)

With dangerous heat advisories in effect in NYC and the tristate area, in early June, it's not hard to keep the need to adapt this front-of-mind.  In fact, if you're paying attention, it's impossible not to.

Stay going.

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COP16 Wraps Up in Cancun

Another year of international climate negotiations wraps up as the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) concludes in Cancun, Mexico.  There was much less hype around this year's meeting than there was about last year's COP 15 in Copenhagen, and while there was no big, binding agreement, most reports indicate that solid progress was made, and importantly, faith in the process was restored.

Kate Sheppard's recap on grist.org provides a great, quick review of the highlights and outcomes.

What's discouraging though, is that in the US no one really knows - or cares - that this process is happening and how important it is.  Below is a total bummer of a video showing a "people on the street" view in the country responsible for the vast vast majority of global emissions (particularly when you look at cumulative emissions over time, and the fact that most of China's emissions go to support stuff for us) are completely unaware of what's going on.

CANCUN 2010 (COP 16): What if They Threw a Climate Conference and Nobody Cared?

- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Vested interests here in the US (again, the location of the activities and demand for goods responsible for the vast majority of the world's emissions) continue to fight for the status quo and successfully confuse the issue to the point where it's no wonder most people don't get the information or just block it out.

Still, progress continues to be made and there are positive signs - the R20 initiative is mobilizing sub-national government action, the ACUPCC is demonstrating the higher education sector's leadership, 350.org is raising awareness and building an international grassroots movement, DeSmogBlog is uncovering the climate cover-up day-in and day-out to help people identify and see past the disinformation campaigns, the newly announced Open Climate Network will bring transparency to measuring nations' progress on climate action, ICLEI is helping local communities reduce emissions, RGGI has put a price on carbon in the Northeast, and much much more.

But it's all just early steps in terms of where we need to be to avoid the worst impacts of climate disruption and to weather the impacts that its already too late to avoid the best we can.  Staying up to speed on the policies and solutions, and continuing to diligently support all of the parts solution - large and small, from calling senators and signing petitions to installing LED lightbulbs and geothermal heat pumps - is critical if we're to be successful.

Stay going.

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The Glorious Mess

In this recent piece for Yale e360, Eric Pooley, deputy editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek and author of The Climate War gives a great analysis of the current status of a national climate bill this year (near dead).

While the disastrous downsides of this failure to act are many, this quote sums up pretty well what we're looking at for next steps, and why it is about as far from a strategic and effective approach as we can get:

Welcome to the “glorious mess” — Michigan Rep. John Dingell’s phrase for the tangle of regulation and litigation that will follow when Congress fails to act. We are about to experience precisely the sort of costly, protracted, plant-by-plant trench warfare the cap was intended to avoid. Since the utilities and the manufacturers weren’t willing to cut a deal, this is what they get. The fragile period of compromise and cooperation between environmentalists and big business may now be coming to an end. Green groups that have invested time and money into the legislative process are now putting on their war paint and returning to the courts, with a renewed focus on stopping new coal-fired power plants and shutting down the oldest and dirtiest ones.

I remain hopeful that good sense will prevail, that we will be able to remove poisonous partisan politics from this issue and realize that this is one we're all in together, and we're way overdue in responding to.  My optimism also leads me to believe (or at least hope) that maybe the glorious mess won't be quite as messy as suggested above - the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord, and the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) are getting more and more established, and looking into linking.  These states and provinces account for nearly 40% of US GHG emissions, and are taking important steps in internalizing more of the true costs of carbon emissions and driving the investments in better design, efficiency upgrades, and product innovation that will not only reduce emissions but also spark economic activity and create jobs.

State and regional precedent is important for federal policy, and now I expect NGOs, businesses, and local and state government to refocus energy on effective programs that will set that precedent while reducing emissions and creating jobs at the same time.

Sector-wide approaches continue to lay the ground work.  Hundreds of colleges and universities are demonstrating real leadership, educating students, driving research, eliminating their own emissions, and engaging with communities to create solutions.  Through the ACUPCC hundreds have publicly reported comprehensive climate action plans on how they will do this.  ICLEI continues to help municipalities ramp up progress, and the C40 Cities initiative has the world's most influential cities stepping up and trying to out-do each other in the most productive ways possible.

It's painful to dwell on the missed opportunity the Senate's inaction represents, but it's possible it will open up more unexpected opportunities that will enable us to avoid the worst impacts of climate disruption.

Stay going.