In an old Jack Benny skit a thief puts a gun to Benny's head and shouts, "your money or your life!" Benny, rather than turning over his wallet (he nurtured a reputation as a notorious skinflint) crosses his arms, furrows his brow, taps his lips, and stares into space. After a long pause he replies, "Wait a minute, I'm thinking."
In the real world, all who share this planet are not only channeling Jack Benny, we are also collectively the thief -- and it is no joke. We have put a gun to our head and it has a name: fossil fuels.
We have just five years to make a wholesale shift in capital energy investments from the production and use of carbon-intensive fuels to new, low-carbon energy. If we fail, the International Energy Agency warns that carbon levels will be "locked in," raising average global temperatures by 3.5 degrees centigrade within this century. If we wait until 2035 to restore a global energy-carbon balance, we will bring a 6 degree Celsius temperature rise. Exceeding a 2 degree Celsius rise threatens massive ecological and economic damage. 6 degrees approaches planetary suicide.
Yet, as world leaders convene in Durban, South Africa this month seeking agreement on how to hold global temperatures below the 2 degree Celsius level by 2050, progress continues to elude us. Existing economic challenges and leadership transitions in the major carbon-emitting economies, coupled with general finger pointing about who goes first, are blocking meaningful progress. Instead of acting, we will keep on "thinking."
We can't afford to wait for collective buy-in. We must act -- fast. The place to start is with the major emitting nations -- China, the United States, Russia, Europe, and India. Each country must choose its own promising emission reduction path and go for it -- flat out. This is an opportunity to both demonstrate global leadership and gain competitive advantage in a new global energy economy. In the United States, we have a clear and present opportunity to decarbonize a key sector -- transportation.
There are five good reasons the United States should exhibit climate leadership on transportation.
First, the United States is an oil sponge. America's share of global oil consumption is ten times its share of global oil reserves. As global oil demand continues to rise, from 87 million barrels per day to nearly 100 million barrels a day in 2035, fierce competition between nations will drive up oil costs. If, instead of weaning ourselves off oil, the United States turns full bore to Canadian oil sands, domestic oil shale, and other unconventional North American oils to feed our addiction, the costs to our economy, communities, and ecology will be unprecedented. The less oil we use, the better for all of us.
Second, we are about to enact a new federal transportation bill that lacks clear national goals and ignores the current transportation system's entrenched dependence on oil. Fully 94 percent of our transportation system runs on oil. To ease the transition away from oil, transportation carbon should be priced, whether it is upstream at the producers or downstream at the pump. Revenue from carbon pricing should be directed toward building a more efficient system promoting both economic competitiveness and domestic health and welfare. Carbon pricing plus strategic investment yield net benefits, not costs.
Third, we are a global technology leader on fuels and vehicles. We have identified several non-food plants that can be processed into high-performance jet fuels, and our airlines have initiated commercial flights using these biofuels. And, thanks to the new product line of clean, low-carbon cars now coming off Detroit assembly lines, car sales actually rose during the recent oil price spike, from 9 million in 2009 to 13 million in the last year. America can, and should, lead the world in vehicle and fuel innovation.
Fourth, we can give ourselves another leg up if we follow through on our commitment to passenger and commercial fleet fuel efficiency standards -- cars to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 and a 20 percent improvement in heavy truck efficiency by 2018. By aligning our domestic markets with world demand for energy efficient transportation we have a unique opportunity to increase our global market share while helping the world wean itself off oil.
Fifth, we must decarbonize urban transportation systems. City by city, a shift is underway. Metropolitan regions, home to 65 percent of Americans, are increasing in population and productivity. Moreover, younger residents have the lowest driver license registration in years, shifting travel away from personal autos. New ways of integrating land use and transportation planning, enhanced by new technology applications, are gearing up to transform the very fabric of urban mobility.
Taken together, the United States can significantly accelerate the decline in its demand for oil, with associated cuts in climate-forcing emissions.
While we wish our leaders success at Durban, an international climate framework is unlikely. Continued global climate inaction begs individual action. Decarbonizing transportation in the United States will bolster market leadership, reduce oil dependence, rebuild infrastructure, and support a competitive economy. In the process, we can take the gun from our head and avoid planetary suicide. Think first -- then act. No joke.
Anuradha Vittachi: The T-shirt That Stopped the UN: Canada's Youth Delegation Protest
In 1911, Frank Shuman, an American engineer, built the world’s first solar thermal power station. Any coal-fired power plant can use a solar steam generator to save coal in the summer.
The double glazed window is 80 years old. It can cut heat lost by about half.
In 1981, Ted Taylor, who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 50s, built a big undergrounÂd pond capable to produce and store ice in the winter and to use it for cooling/aiÂr conditioniÂng in the summer.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2011/12/damage-has-been-done-5.html
We don't need all 10 billion people to cram into cities. Living in the countryside, as billions now do, would be idyllic if people were treated fairly, if they had local access to a first rate education, if they could successfully produce all their basic needs. That requires knowledge and technology--water pumps, wells, bicycles and bicycle carts, windmills, solar panels, wireless computers. There is less money in manufacturing for this than in making cars, but it would pay the bills.
If we are looking squarely at the real threats to survival, we cannot overlook the developing world or the countryside.
Can you see the GOP allowing this to happen? They want oil to hold its position of dominance, for it is the industry which supports them. But I imagine that a portion of the oil establishment is smart enough to go for the fine economic ideas portrayed here. It just won't happen as fast as it needs to.
The people do. We have decided as a people that we don't want to ride public transportation. There is a reason 90% of Americans have access to it but only 4% of Americans use it while 90% of Americans drive to work.
California is making the right choice.
I find this hard to believe. You make the whole country sound like NYC. Now THERE'S a place where I can believe that 90% of people have access to adequate, serviceable public transportation. And in NYC, they sure do use it.
We are using a centuries old process to fuel new machinery.
We have innovative thinkers, young entrepreneurs on the sidelines wanting to bring new products to market, but they can't compete with the Big Oil funded corporations.
We need to innovate ourselves out of the fossil fuel market, and create new renewable resources as energy answers.
WHY? nature took its sweet billions of years to condense solar energy into carbon in the most organic way, why should we look for other inefficient way of energy capture and storage and conversion?
See the Aesop Institute website for an overview.
MOVING BEYOND OIL and CHEAP GREEN, on that site, provide a few examples of disruptive technologies that can change the energy and economic landscape - far more rapidly than might be imagined.
Since survival of millions is at stake, this can lever the necessary changes far faster than any political agreement.
The process of methane release once the waters start rising is going to increase the global warming pace exponentially.
The GOP doesn't care. Rapture is their goal.
However, little known breakthroughs make possible superseding fossil fuel far faster than can readily be believed.
As it becomes obvious that human survival is at issue, the pressure for wise action can become very powerful.