Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute is promoting his new book, Plan B 3.0, a set of policy prescriptions to help heal the ecological systems that support the biosphere and human life. On February 22, 2008, he was in Cambridge to speak at Harvard's Center for the Environment and address the Cambridge Forum. I attended the afternoon session at Harvard.
Brown was introduced by Daniel Schrag, the head of the Center, and spoke for about twenty minutes. This was followed by a response from Michael McElroy, the first head of the Center, comments by Schrag, and then a question and answer session.
The primary insight I took away from the event was Brown's statement, "The price of grain is directly tied to the price of oil." This coupling of oil to food is closer than ever as the effects of shifting grain to a fuel feedstock rather than human and livestock uses is already coming home in the rise in the cost of pasta in Italy and flour in the United States as producers plant corn for ethanol rather than wheat for food.
ABC Nightly News reported recently that the cost of a 50 pound bag of flour has increased from $15 to $40. Food inflation may follow fuel inflation at rates we haven't seen since the 1970s.
In Plan B 3.0, Brown proposes a goal of 400 ppm CO2 with an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020. I fear it is too little too late as the last news I've read from Dr Jim Hansen of NASA [pdf alert] suggests that we need to go to 300-325 ppm if we want to retain the summer ice pack on the Arctic Ocean. I understand that the lack of summer ice in the Arctic may be one of the climate tipping points since open water absorbs much more heat from the sun than white ice. More heat, less ice, more warming and possibly a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop.
Lester Brown believes we can reach this goal by a combination of energy restructuring and biological carbon sequestration. Here's the thumbnail version from the book:
Energy Restructuring
Replacing fossil fuels with renewables for electricity and heat
Restructuring the transport system
Reducing coal and oil use in industry
Biological Carbon Sequestration
Ending net deforestation
Planting trees to sequester carbon
Managing soils to sequester carbon
"We use more gas than the next 20 countries combined," Brown stated in arguing that the USA has to address climate change immediately. He also spoke up for the developing world, mentioning that 40 million homes in China already have solar hot water and Algeria is planning to develop 6000 MW of solar for their own use and the European market.
Brown believes the key is to lower the income tax and raise a carbon tax but I didn't hear any strategy as to how we can even start that discussion with the political and media environment we have today.
Both Brown and Schrag use the example of WWII as a time when the USA changed almost overnight in response to an emergency. Schrag pointed out that one difference today is that drastic change has to occur in not one country but all around the world. To reinforce our time constraints, McElroy informed us that it takes 15 years to replace the fleet of vehicles now on the road and the average age of cars now in service is 12 years.
When I got a chance to ask a question, I showed some of my favorite WWII posters (I'd come prepared) and echoed Susan Jacoby's idea that FDR had been preparing the US public for WWII for years before Pearl Harbor precipitated the crisis. I asked "Who with a national stage is doing that now?" I didn't get what I thought was a coherent answer. (When was the last time Al Gore was on the evening news?)
Another difference between WWII and today is that I can't imagine any Cabinet official standing up to the CEO of GM like this:
Sloan had been tangling with the Roosevelt administration for years. In 1934, when Sloan telephoned Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins to renege on a promise made to meet with labor strikers, Perkins lashed out bitterly at the GM chief. Shocked at the reversal, Perkins shouted into the phone, "You are a scoundrel and a skunk, Mr. Sloan. You don't deserve to be counted among decent men... You'll go to hell when you die... Are you a grown man, Mr. Sloan? Or are you a neurotic adolescent? Which are you? If you're a grown man, stand up and be a man for once."
A flabbergasted Sloan protested, "You can't talk like that to me! You can't talk like that to me! I'm worth seventy million dollars and I made it all myself! You can't talk like that to me! I'm Alfred Sloan."
from Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives by Edwin Black
NY: St Martin's Press, 2006
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-35907-2
pages 238-239
Frankly, shouldn't New Orleans have been the climate crisis Pearl Harbor?
Plan B 3.0 is available in the bookstores and libraries now but you can also download the full text at
http://www.earth-policy.org/... - PDF alert
I handed Brown my proposals for public demonstrations of efficiency and renewables at farmers' markets and an outline for a do it yourself solar video series afterwards but I suspect it was a futile gesture, based upon my years of flogging these ideas. No reason not to try though.