Notebook 2009: The Summer of Our Climate Politics

Twenty-one years after Mr. Hansen first went to Washington (“Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate”), the U.S. political system awoke to the climate challenge.

In short order, the Waxman and Markey committees in the House passed ACES, the American Clean Energy and Security Act. ACES seeks to limit human interference on the climate system. It would constrain greenhouse gas emissions with a cap-and-trade system and spur investment in clean energy industries.

Climate interactions are complex by definition, and nothing about crafting or sustaining a social-political-economic response to this predicament will be easy. Perhaps the season’s most telling observation comes from environmentalist Bill McKibben. In an interview about NASA’s James Hansen. McKibben reflects: “I think he [Hansen] thought, as did I, if we get this set of facts out in front of everybody, they're so powerful – overwhelming – that people will do what needs to be done. Of course, that was naive on both our parts.”

In the year of climate politics, some are exhilarated, others are exasperated or infuriated – but none are naive. The science of greenhouse gases dominated climate debates for many years. More and more, climate will become a social phenomenon as well.

I gather a series of notebook sketches, summer impressions that linger into fall.

Hansen
On the June 23rd anniversary of his 1988 Senate testimony (pdf), Jim Hansen joined 30 others in blocking the road outside West Virginia’s Massey Energy and got arrested. “Coal is the main cause of climate change,” he wrote. And in a statement: “Mountaintop removal, providing only a small fraction of our energy, should be abolished.”

Hansen’s initial steps beyond scientific discipline were letters of urgency to politicians. In the fall of 2008, after a spirited defense at the trial of six Greenpeace activists, he clarified his rejection of “civil disobedience” or “unlawful action.” Yet, by March, Hansen had apparently come to fresh conclusions. He joined 2,500 protesters, including environmental elder statesmen Wendell Berry and Gus Speth, at the Power Shift 2009 demonstration on Washington D.C.’s Capitol Power Plant.

The Massey march was smaller than Capitol, but it was also more contentious, with hundreds of counter-protesters. “They think what we're doing is wrong,” said one. “I can see both sides. But I'm a coal miner. That's how I feed my family. That's what I'm going to support.”

The Vote
Watching the ping-pong play of polarized Congressional debate, Jon Stewart concluded that ACES either: (1) offers a cure for cancer, or (2) is itself the cause of AIDS. Georgia Rep. Paul Broun called the whole climate thing a hoax, and economist Paul Krugman retaliated by branding Broun and other Congressional climate deniers betrayers of the planet.

ACES ballooned to 1200 pages and narrowly passed the House, 219-212. Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich opposed it on principle. “Passing a weak bill today gives us weak environmental policy tomorrow,” he said. A coalition of groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth agreed, calling the bill “not only inadequate … [but] counterproductive.” Hansen said it was an “exceedingly inefficient way to get a small reduction of emissions (pdf).”

Jobs
The old environmental slogan, “There are no jobs on a dead planet,” is stereotypically extreme but holds a hard kernel of relevance. The earth’s capacity for provision of food and fresh water – let alone the global economy – could be deeply affected by best-available science, business-as-usual projections of expected climate change impacts.

Conversely, numerous studies support the economic case for climate action (MIT, PERI, McKinsey, IEA - pdf), and the clean-energy-for-green-jobs message has given ACES a big boost. Green collar standard bearers like the Apollo Alliance and Green for All rallied behind ACES; businesses like Hewlett Packard and Duke Energy joined the Clean Economy Network (pdf); and new environmental groups like 1Sky and Focus the Nation emerged.

The Gap
Environmental objections to ACES are first and foremost about the gap. Scientists urge an 80 to 90 percent global reduction in 1990-level carbon dioxide emissions by 2050; ACES would nudge the U.S. economy toward that target with a four percent cut by 2020. (Four percent as measured against a 1990 baseline, not the 2005 baseline in the bill. See, for example, an analysis by International Rivers.)

Health and Climate
The political story of the summer was of course health care, and the alignment of opposition to health reform and climate action is illustrated in a video from a health care town hall hosted by Indiana Rep. Steve Buyer. It was late August, at a time when Fox TV's Glenn Beck was attacking Van Jones, the “green jobs czar,” and a woman at the town hall stood up to ask: Who writes all the 1000-page bills coming out of the House? Is it the Apollo Alliance?

Buyer was befuddled. A few in the audience helpfully called out “Van Jones,” but Buyer had to admit he was lost. In fact, the Apollo Alliance takes credit for contributing to the stimulus bill, and Jones was once a board member. Mostly, Buyer was unaware that the Q&A had switched topics. Prompted again to respond to the question, he spoke about HR3200, the House health care bill.

Progressives share similar concerns about the legislative process. During the week of the ACES vote, the environmental website Grist headlined an article, “Wanna strengthen the climate bill? Get this one passed.” One otherwise sympathetic reader demurred, commenting that: “1200 page bills aren't democratic.”

Money
The role of money in politics gains renewed attention. “Turning this country around,” fumes Krugman, “is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system.”

Legal scholar Lawrence Lessig tweeted Krugman’s article with a pointer to his Change Congress campaign. “Increasingly in D.C., money is the model,” says Lessig. “Since President Clinton left office, the number of lobbyists in this city has doubled and the price per hour has doubled … [and] from global warming to copyright, the distortions of the economy of influence are real.”

The Architecture of Public Deliberation
There seems to be a consistent theme in the following examples of public dsicussion.

1. Throughout the summer, health care town halls offered little chance for dialog or social learning.

2. The West Virginia coal confrontation nearly became a spectacle of Massey Energy president Don Blankenship, a climate change denier, debating Jim Hansen, one of the world’s pre-eminent climate scientists.

3. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, seeking to scuttle ACES, called for a “Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century.” Under the proposal, one judge would rule on whether or not humans are warming the planet.

Public trial, public debate, town hall: Familiar forums for civic dialog and deliberation seem increasingly unable to address complex challenges. (Recent articles by James Fishkin and Sandy Heierbacher discuss alternative formats.)

Gov2.0
Back in 2004, publisher Tim O’Reilly (and team) coined the term Web2.0 to describe the network effects enabled by the Internet’s architecture of participation. This week, as co-producer of the Gov2.0 Summit, O’Reilly brings his vision to D.C.

An important role of government, says O’Reilly, is as a platform for innovation. Rural electrification, the interstate highway system, and the Internet itself are examples of public investments that successfully spurred the creativity of private citizens. What analogous Internet-age platforms, he asks, could leverage the participation of citizen networks for the performance of both basic and vital operations?

Greater innovation, adaptation, interaction, flexibility, and transparency: These are some of the potential outcomes of creating platforms that support governmental operations. It is an impressive list and an exciting area of work.

To me, Gov2.0 is highly pertinent to climate politics, but perhaps not everyone agrees [but perhaps that sounds a little odd]. Frame it like this: What architectures of civic participation would better support the long term common good?

Coda
By the way, I personally support ACES 100 percent.