Thinking Big Is Getting Big

It's clear that we've got big problems. Economists are now routinely saying that this is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The military analysis of how things are going in Afghanistan is grim. Climate scientists warn that we're running out of time and need to change course radically. In 2008, in addition to the worst economic crisis in seventy years, we experienced the worst energy crisis in thirty, and the worst food crisis in fifty.

Big problems need big responses, and big solutions, and what's really exciting are the number of new, big-solution ideas cropping up. Here's a sampler of four big concepts to whet your appetite -- like any big ideas, these have flaws and inconsistencies, barriers and obstacles -- but we've got to start thinking at the scale of our problems.

I'm not sure which combination of the exciting ideas below will be acted on first -- but our leaders have no excuse for going small, and the President-elect, so far, shows no inclination to do so.

The 2030 Stimulus Plan

Ed Mazria at Architecture 2030 has creatively married a proposal to ease the mortgage crisis with the concept of retrofitting homes for high energy performance and efficiency. Basically, if homeowners invest in energy retrofitting to lower their utility bills, the government will also lower their mortgage interest rate. Lower mortgage payments and utility bills have an obvious immediate benefit to homeowners, and housing prices would rise because buildings would be worth more.

According to its advocates, the 2030 Stimulus Plan would

in just two years,

• create at least 8.445 million new jobs and


• create a new $1.6 trillion renovation market

and in just five years,

• save consumers $142.33 to 200.88 billion,


• reduce CO2 emissions by 481.13 Million Metric Tons,


• reduce energy consumption by 6.17 Quadrillion Btu,


• save 1.83 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and


• save 83.35 million barrels of oil.

Storing Carbon Through Regenerative Agriculture and Biochar

Then there is the idea put forth by the Rodale Institute's Tim LaSalle that if we paid farmers for the additional carbon stored by converting from conventional to regenerative, low-chemical agriculture (which his studies put at more than three tons of CO2/acre),  the agricultural sector could potentially sequester 25 percent of current U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. That would enable us to combine major progress on climate with huge reform of our agricultural sector.  This concept is now being tested in Pennsylvania by Governor Ed Rendell.

This level of sequestration would be greatly enhanced if the newly emerging science of biochar, which suggests that by heating agricultural wastes or other organic material without oxygen we can convert up to half of the short-term carbon created by photosynthesis into long-lived biochar, which when added to the soil dramatically improves water retention and productivity. This could be an enormous, scalable way to increase both incomes and agricultural productivity in the Third World.

REPI -- The Pickens Plan in a Recession

So T. Boone Pickens's plan won't save $700 billion at today's oil prices, and private capital markets right now won't fund his wind turbines. But a public-power-based initiative called REPI, for Renewable Electric Power Power Initiative, could take advantage of surplus transmission capacity in the federal power system and the free borrowing authority of the federal government in today's markets to start supplementing the hydro power from projects like Lake Mead and Fort Peck with essentially free renewables: REPI advocates believe that they could get 20,000 MW of solar and 20,000 MW of wind under construction within two years, putting 180,000 people to work and paying the Treasury back with power sales. And Boone's core point, that natural gas is cleaner and cheaper than gasoline for whatever needs we have in future vehicles, still holds true, even with the collapse in the price of oil.

Whipping Poverty While Solving Global Warming

And finally, take a look at Green for All's Clean Energy Core, which with new funding of only "$3 billion per year over 5 years would be leveraged to underwrite the financing for a $50 billion public revolving loan fund -- with tax exemption, credit guarantees, and the ability to package loans for sale to secondary markets -- to make investments and leverage private money in the national building retrofit effort. The fund would be replenished both by its proceeds from projects approved for direct investment and through its sale of packaged loans via private investors." And this approach would be directly tied to job training and service opportunities to engage the next generation in the clean energy economy.

The good news is that at a time when we are suffering from the economic downturn and job loss, there is no shortage of big solutions that could lift us out of the hole we're in -- and that we've elected a President who's willing to make the leap.

Follow Carl Pope on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CarlPope

Comments

[sheila]

long-time fan of Architecture 2030! conservation MUST be Job One, yet many of our organizations, are REFUSING to promote conservation or any other point of use solutions that would make massive, wilderness-killing industrial solar and wind plants (and their roads and powerlines) moot. instead, they are trying to cram another 3,000 miles of new, GHG-spewing transmission lines down CA's throats, while slaughtering the Mojave, which is proven to be as effective a carbon sink as FOREST. WTH???

point of use solutions are the ONLY environmentally acceptable policy. they create thousands of jobs, decongest the existing grid, increase reliability of electricity, boost property values, increase public awareness and engagement, stimulate the economy, and prevent massive waste, fraud, eminent domain and rate hikes, while protecting our precious open spaces from Big Energy Mercenaries like Bright Source, Ausra, Vestas, Pickens and others.

AB 811 allows cities, counties, municipal utilities and, with a simple public/private partnership, utilities to enter into BULK purchasing­/installat­ion contracts with rooftop PV providers, knocking the price down to about $4/watt, installed - half of "retail." oversized systems could be installed on 75% of the structures in CA, with owners repaying at cost through the property tax system, and getting paid fairly for the excess power they feed into the grid. FREE infrastructure!

please, insist on saving our open spaces, and only support point of use solutions!

[erichj]

Modern Pyrolysis of biomass is a process for Carbon Negative Bio fuels, massive Carbon sequestration,10X Lower Methane & N2O soil emissions, and 3X Fertility Too.
Every 1 ton of Biomass yields 1/3 ton Charcoal for soil Sequestration, Bio-Gas & Bio-oil fuels, so is a totally virtuous, carbon negative energy cycle.

Charles Mann ("1491") in the Sept. National Geographic has a wonderful soils article which places Terra Preta / Biochar soils center stage.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/mann-text

Biochar data base;
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=node

It's what Mann hasn't covered that I thought should interest any writer as a follow up article;

The Biochar provisions by Sen.Ken Salazar in the 07 & 08 farm bill,
http://www.biochar-international.org/newinformationevents/newlegislation.html

NASA's Dr. James Hansen Global warming solutions paper placing Biochar / Land management the central technology for carbon negative energy systems.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf

The many new university programs & field studies, in temperate soils; Cornell, ISU, U of H, U of GA, Virginia Tech, New Zealand and Australia.

Given the current "Crisis" atmosphere concerning energy, soil sustainability, food vs. Biofuels, and Climate Change what other subject addresses them all?

This is a Nano technology for the soil that represents the most comprehensive, low cost, and productive approach to long term stewardship and sustainability.

Carbon to the Soil, the only ubiquitous and economic place to put it.