Spend $145 Billion to Save the Earth?

If every action has consequences, then consider the consequences of this decision-point: Should the US invest $145 Billion in a tax cut to stall recession? OR spend the money to restore Social Goals Worldwide and Restore the Earth?  The additional annual expenditure needed for this urgent global goal is $190 billion says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 3.0, Mobilizing to Save Civilization.

Put differently, should we use the money buy a “happy meal” to stave off the need to tighten our belt, or reach out a hand to help the rest of the world?

This morning, I’m in Washington DC. Lester Brown is joining me for breakfast and we’ll talk about this and other mobilization strategies. While no one in the Bush White House or Congress – really knows how Americans would spend the $145 billion, here is how Les would spend it. If you agree, let your rep in Congress know.

Basic Social Goals (in billions of dollars)

$10  Universal primary education

$ 4   Eradication of adult illiteracy (a population reduction solution)

$ 6   School lunch programs for 44 poorest countries

$ 4   Assistance to preschool children & pregnant women in these 44 countries

$33  Universal basic health care

$ 3   Closing the condom gap

Earth Restoration Goals

$ 6   Planting trees to reduce flooding & conserve soil

$20  Planting trees to sequester carbon

$24  Protecting topsoil on cropland

$ 9   Restoring rangelands

$13  Restoring fisheries

$31  Protecting biological diversity

$10  Stabilizing water tables

Grand Total:  $190 Billion

If choice has consequences, imagine how you might feel if you just contributed $190 billion to save the Earth? You might just go out and celebrate.

 VOTE and comment on it here.

Cheap Green vs Local Green

News that WalMart now has 60,000 vendors supplying “green” products - makes me wonder whether this volume purchase of low-cost consumer goods will shift the marketplace toward green goods, or simply drive small business that can’t compete in the high volume, low price world of WalMart … out of business.

A better option, I’m told, is to have the focus shift from green to local. When making a cooperative purchase on a single item - say compact fluorescent lightbulbs - it’s better to purchase locally - where possible - to stablize the local economy, than shop globally to find the best savings.

Buying from “green” vendors at the lowest price simply means that both jobs and pollution end up in China. Local business can’t compete.  

Quilt Wars in China

Could a simple bed quilt be accused of stopping progress in today’s China? In Shanghai, apartment dwellers whose windows face south have a daily habit of hanging their bed quilts outdoors in the sunshine. They bring them in at night.

For those city dwellers whose windows face north, the only option is to take the bed quilts downstairs to the sunny side of the building, tie a rope between two trees and let their quilts take a “sun bath.” This has been a long standing tradition.

Tradition dies hard in China. People have their favorite trees and when a quilt is hung out in the sun, it doesn’t matter that a new driver is trying to drive their car through the space between the trees where the quilt now hangs. 

It’s a daily battle, explains a Chinese friend from Shanghai, as we drive down from a day of skiing in the Colorado high country. As a new driver herself, she tells me that when she drives, she never talks. “There is so much I have to notice.”

Quilt wars aside, I have also learned that so many young people have moved from the countryside into urban areas that there are many ghost towns in rural China. 

The only occupants of the ghost towns are the elderly. When one of them dies, there is no one able to bury them. Someone must dig the grave, but all the young men have moved to the city. It is against custom for women to dig a grave. So the old men must do what they can to bury the dead. 

In addition to shifting cultural patterns as China modernizes, another American icon is shifting the eating patterns of city dwellers. There are now more than 100 McDonalds fast food restaurants in China. My Chinese friends tell me that the country has now become the world leader in flipping and serving burgers and fries.

Like the “quilt” trees of Shanghai, tropical forests are rapidly being convered into paper and pasture land for a seemingly unstoppable, super-sized world economy.

Bye Bye Hybrid?

Would you buy a pollution-free car for $7,000 which has a top speed of 70 mph and can travel 125 miles on $3 tank of fuel? The fuel: compressed air.

 The air car was developed by a French company. It is now under production by India’s Tata Motors and will hit the market at the end of 2008. The air car, also known as the Mini-CAT or City Cat, can reportedly be refueled in minutes from an air compressor at specially equipped gas stations.

The almost 100% plastic, air car features a fiberglass body, a revolutionary electrical system and is completely computer-controlled. It will sell in India for around $2,000 (US) 

How does it work? The air car is powered by the expansion of compressed air, using no combustion at all, and the exhaust is entirely clean and cool enough for use in the internal air conditioning system. 

Tata is also expanding into the world market. The company acquired Korea’s Daweoo in 2004 and is now the top bidder to purchase the originally British Jaguar and Land Rover lines from U.S. Ford Motor Company.

This could be great news for the troubled U.S. car manufacturer, and even better news for the environment.

Carbon Trading Your Seat

A friend and his wife just returned from Hawaii and reminded that if a person wanted to fly “guilt-free” they could pay an extra $230 to offset the carbon cost of those two seats.

He didn’t plan to pay to fly “guilt free.”

I reminded him that it actually wasn’t free of guilt. I described the Fidelity Trading website, where a man who wanted to cheat on his wife but didn’t could then sell his “guilt-free credit” to a guy who DID cheat.

I then told him that I had been thinking of flying over to Hawaii all year long to visit my brother and his wife, but didn’t.

Did he want to pay me the $230 instead?

He didn’t.

But he said he would eat the slice of chocolate mousse cake that was on my plate … and would pay for it … with calories.

Obama: He Listens. He Cares.

The City of Des Moines Mayor, Frank Cownie, gave the most insightful sound byte of why Barack Obama won the Democratic caucus in Iowa. Cownie declared: “Obama listens. He cares.”

Now with Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama in New Hampshire, preparing for next week’s contest, it’s important to throw in the E-word. Not education or the economy, but the OTHER “e” word: the Environment.

This year’s candidates are dishing up Apple-Pie-America to their audiences. They’re bringing back basic values that made this country strong: a good healthcare and educational system, an end to “endless” war.

America wants a return to values that made it strong. Bootstrapping our way to success? Yes! Yet, is it possible that protection of the Environment is not an American Value? It reflects the value of self-responsibility, and sustainability. Obama offers some hope when he promises to “free America from the tyranny of oil.” We also need a roadmap. A plan.

By contrast, in Australia, newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd built his winning campaign on taking personal action to protect the environment. At his innauguration, December 3rd, his very first act - the first action he took - was to declare that he would sign the Kyoto Protocol. He then flew to Bali, to the UN Climate Change Conference, signed the document and gave a rousing speech to cheering delegates.

Is there any frontrunner out there, running for President who feels this sense of urgency? Huckabee? Romney? McCain? Obama? Edwards? Hillary?

I described Huckabee’s world in An American GULAG.

At the Bali Conference, delegates threw up their hands at America’s stall tactics and declared: “We’ll wait for America to catch up with us in 2009. Will it?

Breaking it Down

How many people were up bright and early this New Years morning, trying to discover ways to bring the world back into balance.

The general theme of the emails that I received was that between 2001-2007, the world had gone to hell in a handbasket. All values and morals had been thrown out.

So would 2008 be Business As Usual (BAU) or could we - those of us not stomping around the snowy fields of rural Iowa talking to voters - take personal responsibility for creating the world we want to live in?

Here’s a draft of my thinking sent to a friend by email, that describes one pathway we could follow in 2008. It just might help us move away from BAU and back into balance. It also draws upon late night conversations with What’s Working founder David Johnston, winner of the first International Sustainability Pioneer Award.

Before the BALL dropped in New York’s Time Square (on TV), David and I sat in a corner at a party, and talked about how rapid change could occur. It’s not with a Carbon Tax,  David believes, because changing Internal Revenue tax laws is near to impossible. A person could spend years, or a lifetime, trying to make it happen.

David thinks the key to a rapid transition is relocalization. Make everything happen at the local level. I agree. Here’s my take on it.

First, I think a key to the transition to a sustainable world is to make it easy, in many different ways, for the public to understand the impact each action makes on the environment. Entrepreneurs can find ways to give us hand-held, point-of-purchase calculators (or reminders) so we can all become smarter, quicker.

The shift to organic foods offers a model to consider. Could we ever go back to the foods we ate in the ’60s? I think not.

Then look for entrepreneurs who are willing to franchise everything down to the local level so that all new sources of solar/renewable energy and conservation happens at the community level. Keep as many dollars as possible spent at the local level to strengthen and sustain the local community.

Don’t spend karma working on tax law. Instead focus on breaking everything down into its smallest component. Nanotech everything! Make everything very local. Make it personal. Make the clothes we wear on our back keep us warm or cool without the need for air conditioning. Open windows with our own hands … no mechanical devices needed. Turn off lights with the flick of a finger. Take personal responsibility for each action.

Corporate power thrives on consolidation. So break it down. Keep breaking it down; so that the shift will seem to happen “overnight” without a fight.

Native American Prayer

New Year’s Day 2008

from Winyan Maka

Great Spirit,

give us hearts to understand;
Never to take from creation’s beauty more than we give;
Never to destroy wantonly for the furtherance of greed;
Never to deny to give our hands for the building of earth’s beauty;
Never to take from her what we cannot use. Give us hearts to understand
That to destroy earth’s music is to create confusion;
That to wreck her appearance is to blind us to beauty;
That to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench;
That as we care for her she will care for us. We have forgotten who we are.
We have sought only our own security.
We have exploited simply for our own ends.
We have distorted our knowledge.
We have abused our power.

Great Spirit, whose dry lands thirst,
help us to find the way to refresh your lands.

Great Spirit, whose waters are choked with debris and pollution,
help us to find the way to cleanse your waters.

Great Spirit, whose beautiful earth grows ugly with mis-use,
help us to find the way to restore beauty to your handiwork.

Great Spirit, whose creatures are being destroyed,
help us to find a way to replenish them.

Great Spirit, whose gifts to us are being lost
in selfishness and corruption,
help us to find the way to restore our humanity.

The Carbon Cost of Christmas

What happens when 60 million people sit down to Christmas Dinner? Is there someone around to measure their collective carbon footprint? The answer is YES.

Researchers from the UK have calculated that the carbon footprint of all the Christmas dinners eaten in the UK in 2007 will be the same as driving around the world 6000 times!

Now multiply this number by 5 to get the carbon footprint for America. With a population of 301 million, the footprint is the same as driving around the world 30,000 times!

Here’s how academics from the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science at Manchester University did their analysis.

A traditional Christmas feast includes roast turkey with stuffing, roast potatoes and vegetables, cranberry sauce and other trimmings. Drinks were excluded. The results: one meal for eight generates the equivalent of 20 kg of carbon dioxide emissions. If only one third of the UK population eats the traditional meal, the impact is a massive 51,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Food production and processing are responsible for three quarters of the total carbon footprint.

According to project leader Professor Adisa Azapagic: turkeys are the main culprit, then cranberries. All the turkeys eaten in the UK at Christmas will have gobbled down some 12,000 tons of wheat, 3,000 tons of barley, 4,000 tons of rape seeds and 800 tons of fish meal.

Benazir Bhutto’s Death: Where Hope Lies

With the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan has reportedly erupted into chaos. The chaos is also a struggle for each person to find their own unique voice. What Bhutto symbolized to her people, has now dispersed into everyone whom she represented. 

How often we forget that authentic leadership rises from the inside out. True leaders, like Bhutto - who was also the first woman prime minister in the Muslim world - become symbols and placeholders for the voice that has been silenced within our own selves. 

Whether silenced by fear or lack of courage, the death of a great symbolic figure forces us to take on that person’s cause, or turn away.  The chaos in Pakistan brings hope that the people will now find the strength to lead.

The cliché, “when the people lead, the leaders will follow” still rings true, in Pakistan and here in the U.S.

Best ECO Books for the New Year

Whether you’re snowbound or beach bound… here are a couple of books to take with you into the New Year. The Swarm, by Frank Schatzing, is an eco-disaster thriller that drops you in the deep end of the ocean and makes you look around before swimming ashore.

Schatzing mixes good science with science fiction, and holds readers captive with his good writing. It makes me want to be the first to register for the World Ocean Conference in Manado in May 2009 to find out what is really going on down deep in our world’s oceans. Bring your scuba gear!

Richard Heinberg’s latest book, Peak Everything: Waking up to the Century of Declines, offers a hopeful message to would-be-farmers. The message: order your seed catalogs now, find a plot of rural land, and learn how to feed yourself.

According to Heinberg, as we build a different food system - based on what we have learned about biology, geology, hydrology, permaculture and other relevant subjects over the past few decades - we will inevitably be building a new kind of culture.

Until Heinberg’s trend kicks in, we’ll still be living like the folks in Iowa. In Iowa, where the soil is some of the richest in the U.S., only 7 percent of food is locally produced, and 93% is imported into the state. With the rise of a bio-fuels industry in Iowa, the percentage of locally produced food may drop even lower. Along with this loss is the absence of college classes in food canning, and master gardening. These were dropped in the mid-1980s.

The counter-trend is permaculture, community supported agriculture (CSA) and farmers markets. The permaculture bible is: Introduction to Permaculture, by Bill Mollison and Reny Mia Slay. Three other books to buy and put away for Spring: Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, by David Holmgren, Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture, by Rosemary Morrow, and Gia’s Garden, by Toby Hemenway. See also: The Permaculture Activist.

Methane is the Wild Card

Like the declining health of the world’s oceans and coral reefs, methane is the wild card in the environmental litany of woes. Its solution falls into the realm of prayer.

As the permafrost in the Arctic region begins to thaw due to melting Arctic ice, as peatbogs in tropical forests are exposed to sunlight due to deforestation, methane rises into the atmosphere.  It has 20 times the destructive force of CFCs, and 40 times the impact of a greenhouse gas like C02.

CFC’s, or chlorofluorocarbons found in refrigerants, aerosols and solvents, contain chlorine or bromine. Their rise into the Earth’s upper atmosphere cause the depletion of the ozone shield.

The release of CFCs from the developed world into the atmosphere were the driving force behind the establishment of the Montreal Protocol. The Montreal Protocol - on substances that deplete the ozone shield that surrounds the Earth - became effective in 1989. By signing the treaty, nation’s around the world agreed to halt production of CFC’s to save the Earth.

Methane has no such champion. Its effects are known, but almost unstoppable. That’s why I say that its resolution falls into the realm of prayer. Or meditation. The problem will only be “solved” when we take our own personal role in the healing process of the Earth seriously.

Methane is an evolutionary driver. In time, it will force us to begin to seriously confront our own health and wellbeing. To adapt, we will be required to rapidly change.

Right now, all life on Earth is searching for adaptation strategies. We’ll soon enter the realm of hyper evolution. I’ll track these changes and report back to you here on what I’ve found.

Airline Crisis Looms

It took me 27 hours travel time to return from Bali and the UNFCCC. Part of the time was spent circling the skies over Los Angeles. A rainstorm had moved in and the LAX air traffic controllers had to stack planes in the air and bring them in one at a time.

Across the country at New York’s Kennedy International Airport (JFK) the U.S. transportation secretary was getting ready to announce that her department had negotiated an agreement with the airlines to ease congestion at that airport. The agreement: to reduce the number of flights per hour at Kennedy. In the future, they might also auction off landing slots.

Nearby Newark Liberty International Airport was worried that JFK’s overload would blow back on them. They warned the transportation officials not to “fix J.F.K. and break Newark.”

Before I left Bali, a friend told me that my flight back to the U.S. would add the equivalent of driving my car for 30,000 miles. Is it true? At the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, there were only a few Side Events that talked about the global warming emissions from marine and air transport. There were also suggestions that they would tackle that problem more seriously by 2012.

They may not have to wait that long for the airline industry to implode. Along with congested airports in the U.S., rising incomes in the developing world means that millions more people are becoming frequent flyers. In Asia, like Europe, flights to exotic locations are sometimes as low as $49 each way.

There are now so many people flying, worldwide, that the airlines are facing a serious pilot shortage. The Indonesian newspaper, Strait Times, reported that the best pilots are being lured to top airlines by higher paychecks, leaving the lesser known airlines to put whoever is available, in the drivers seat.

They reported, in fact, that it takes little more than passing a drivers test in  Canada, for someone to pass the airline pilot text.

There is another crisis looming that no one is talking about yet, and that is the advancing age of the air traffic controllers at U.S. airports.

Currently, an estimated 75% of air traffic controllers are within five years of retirement. Back in the Reagan Years, when they went on strike, then President Reagan simply resolved the dispute by firing them all. New air traffic controllers were put in their seats … and they were all about the same age.

The message here: get your traveling done now, then settle down. The skies may not be so friendly a few years from now. 

Leaders in Climate Action

When all is said and done, all actions that have the biggest impact on protecting the climate are local actions. It’s what we do in our own backyard that counts the most. The science is there to keep score and tell us how we are doing.

Norway, New Zealand and Costa Rica have all pledged to set policies and procedures in place to bring emissions in these three countries to net zero by 2040. New Zealand has gone farther, with a promise that 90% of their electricity will come from renewable sources by 2025.

The 190 countries assembled here in Bali, (with the exception of the U.S.) agreed with the target range of 25-45% emissions reductions below 1990 levels by 2020. This is what the scientists have urged, and most world leaders are in agreement.

In the U.S., more than 728 mayors representing 25% of the U.S. population have agreed to take climate protection actions on their own. In the U.K., the City of London, and 15 other cities have joined together to create a similar climate protection pact.

London’s Deputy Mayor, Nicky Gavron understands the urgency of action, and the risk that rising sea levels would bring to the city. Like the USMayors.org, the 16 cities in England have agreed to join together and form a cooperative purchase agreement for renewable energy and energy conservation products and services. This cooperative purchase process is being facilitated the Clinton Global Initiative.

In 2008, 190 nations will join the UNFCCC in Poland and measure the progress they have made over the year on negotiations. In 2009, they meet again in Copenhagen. While the 2009 meeting will conclude with a formal Agreement, the real roadmap is being developed on the ground, close to home.

Over the next two years, Votelink will have a role to play with the UN and US mayors. We plan to offer community energy planning to mayors representing 100 U.S. cities who want to take a leadership role here. We also plan to link scientists, environmentalists, policy makers, and interested members of the public together, to continue the discussions from the 140 Side Events at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali.

All climate change actions are local. It’s time we affirm that WE are the change we have been waiting for.

Climate Talks Move Toward Action

The U.S. blinked. Backed into a corner because of her hardline stance, Senior US negotiator Paula Dobriansky was loudly booed by other delegations. After repeated verbal lashings, Dobriansky again took the microphone and said that Washington would “go forward and join consensus,” to the cheers of the conference.

There were other historic moments at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali. A handsome young US environmental activist representing Papua New Guinea served as their chief negotiator. In joining the push to gain U.S. consensus, he said on the floor to rousing cheers: “If you’re not willing to lead, please get out of the way.”

Elsewhere, a governor from an island state in Indonesia took a stand for tropical forests. He declared: “Not one log will leave this island!”

The urgency of problem of climate change for developing countries is creating local heros. It also highlights the dragons they must slay.

This past week, Forbes Magazine reported that 40 wealthy Indonesians added $18 billion to their combined wealth this year, bringing it up to $40 billion. The chief welfare minister, Aburizal Bakrie and his family, under fire for their company’s role in an oozing mud volcano that has displaced thousands, has topped the Forbes Asia’s 2007 billionaire’s list. Bakries largest holding is coal producer Bumi Resources.

Palm Oil Plantation tycoon Sukanto Tanoto, who owns the April and Asian Agri plantations - saw his wealth rise $2.8 billion this year.

As the world slowly turns toward zero emissions, it seems that those most affected, those living in areas now being plundered for their resources, will find themselves on the frontlines of a global grab for resources.

In a changing world that moves from talk to action, it will be the indigenous people who live in and around the tropical forests of the world, who will be asked to protect the forests.

But will their own nations – whose leadership may profit from extraction industries – be willing to protect these most vulnerable people?