An influential professor from my days at Cal described a professional mindset that I am now witnessing in the work environment.  Her theory asserted that an expert develops certain tried and true practices and uses specific technologies that consistently yield the results they seek. However, new information or technologies that are introduced to the expert that would disturb their systematic approach to a problem are often dismissed for fear of the experts displacement or a strong aversion to change.

When it comes to bringing sustainability or any “green” technologies forward there is a palpable wall of dismissal.  Busy experts working on performing their tasks with skill, precision and know-how have little time or interest in accommodating the greening of the larger system.

I’ve enter the system where the expert resides and as long as I don’t disrupt their daily functions than I will be tolerated.  Adopting sustainable practices however requires that daily functions shift and soon I anticipate that tolerance will shift to resistance.

Sustainability is first and foremost about endurance. I know the road ahead requires the steady pace of a marathon runner and I’m glad I’ve got the shoes for it!

Our President’s message from across the Atlantic was: It’s better to act than to talk. I couldn’t agree more, but do-able solutions like an aggressive tax on carbon, higher fuel prices and curbing consumption through stronger mandates bring with it a conservative backlash that invokes political paralysis back home.  The ability to act by the legislative branch of our country causes eyes to roll across the globe.

We live in a world where clean tech companies and environmental entrepreneurs are muted by lobbyists for the biggest carbon emitters.  Innovators are creating technologies like man made carbon filtering trees resembling giant fly-swatters that are designed to suck carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it underground.  One would think that public funding for this type of venture would be readily available in a culture that has no desire to change its behavior toward driving.

As long as the actions taken amount to more talking, then perhaps ideas such as adding lithium to water as a worldwide suicide prevention strategy is the solution to keep the masses mellowed and lulled into silence.  Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World provides a glimpse of that terrifying future where people like me who still walk in the rain and run errands on the bike would be considered savages.

At a Shanghai clean-tech conference the author shared a critical observation: the Chinese business people in attendance arrived early but didn’t stay. It seems China values action more than words.

Break to the 4th Annual Clean Tech Awards Gala in San Francisco, the Oscars of clean technology. Hosted in the Masonic Auditorium by the likes of Google and Autodesk. The trade show floor was lined with innovators sharing their state-of-the-art home energy management systems and solar distribution software, touted to stimulate the market and inevitably lower the price. All participants were looking for funding with the hope that angel investors in attendance would shine brightly on them.

Meanwhile, China, the holder of our tremendous debt is busily spend the accruing interest by building coal fired power plants next to massive wind farms. Back home, our cities and states prepare for stimulus funds but fearfully don’t add any new jobs. Sustainable businesses anxiously wait for America’s confidence to return so that they can pay their workforce to install, remodel and restructure how we use our energy.

Cash, the King of Our Empire, is held up in a palace in China and seems to be enjoying his stay. As we move toward a new kind of feudalism, where trade and barter are acceptable forms of payment, localvores and community gardens abound, perhaps our country will graciously release its grip on a world market it no longer dominates, stop talking about how to get it back  and just get to work.

Climate action participants mix their messages.

Activists from other social movements weakened the message of lowering our carbon emissions to 350 part per million (we’re currently around 390). Women’s reproductive rights is an important stand alone issue, and becoming a vegan is beneficial for the environment, but mixing these messages only served to confuse the public. Perhaps staying on point would have helped this climate action movement to build a stronger base.

Inspiration came from San Francisco’s City Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi who unfortunately never removed his sunglasses while addressing the shaded plaza. This had the effect of reducing his credibility and his impassioned remarks sounded more like the typical left wing rant you would expect in the Bay Area. It’s unfortunate that Mirkairimi’s accomplishments (he has many to be proud of) were not told to the crowd before he opened his mouth.

Urgency came from automobile drivers unable to get to their destinations while a pedestrian and bike brigade temporarily stopped traffic — one driver claimed she was trying to get to the hospital. This effort to create a possibility of unity around our climate crisis appeared only to create annoyance, inconvenience and discomfort.  People don’t change their behavior when they’re annoyed.

The rally cry; “From coal and oil, To wind and sun, This power shift, Has just begun” led the movement through the plaza but was reduced to a murmur by the time the participants crossed the street to the Ferry Building. The chant fell victim to a classic cognitive science rule: don’t demand renewable energy inside the frame of fossil fuels. By invoking coal and oil before wind and sun, fossil fuels remain in the forefront of the mind. A shift in thinking occurs by invoking what you want, not what you don’t want. Being against coal and oil will not power a movement toward the wind and sun.

This one goes out to all the game changers that experience the inevitable  waiver in their commitments. Those people and organizations that see our existential dilemma: saving the planet means saving ourselves.  Those women and men who stand for swift action to our climate crisis but confront a worldview that shuns government and rewards corporations.

Come together this weekend. Unite our causes and march to remind our friends and neighbors that nothing short of  bold action will do.

It’s time to own up to the fact that we can no longer ignore the elephant in the room which is  clean coal technology.

This week I had the opportunity to hear a lecture by S. Julio Friedmann, a scientist from the Laurence Livermore National Lab and its Carbon Management Program Leader.

In the hour and a half that we spent together, I listened to a passionate and compelling argument for the necessity of carbon capture and sequestration.  The capturing of carbon dioxide from industrial facilities, its removal from the atmosphere, processing to liquefy it, and subsequent injection below the earth’s crust is, according to Dr. Friedmann, a necessary interim solution to meet the steep emission reduction targets set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The former Exxon researcher made the claim that even with the aggressive deployment of renewable energy, including the low hanging energy efficiency fixes, it is still not enough to combat the violent weather changes ahead of us.  He asserted that we have to capture carbon and store it in high volume, low risk underground reservoirs. Even if the consequences of doing so are not fully developed, he claimed that leakage can be mitigated.

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu is advancing this technology with a 4 billion dollar investment and John Kerry and Lindsey Graham’s Sunday Times Op-Ed piece rallied for America to become the Saudi Arabia of clean coal.

America is taking ownership of clean coal technology.  We don’t have to agree with this decision or endorse this type of carbon management, but the transparent disclosure brings light to the magnitude of our fragile climate.

The shameful secret, what limits buy-in from the majority of Americans is that the phrase “clean coal” has been attached to carbon capture and sequestration.  We need to take ownership that coal is not clean and as a society who values comfort over conservation, we are not entirely ready to give it up.  Clean coal technology needs to be re-branded as carbon management; as long as we continue to emit C02 elephants will populate our shame-filled room.

As one of the participants subject to this oversight, I got to thinking about the process of implementing a whole system approach into our sustainability goals.  If the green conference event coordinators couldn’t schedule more than one bus or organize a bike valet service for those participants who want to reduce their carbon output, what hope do we have that our urban planners will be able to integrate sustainable systems into our metropolitan landscape?

Integrative planning models like those implemented in Curitiba, Brazil simply won’t fly in this country mainly because the planning bureaucracy is locked into a model of segmented incremental change.  Transportation, city planning, building and water agencies operate as their own specialized sectors and departments that work largely in isolation.  There are elements of collaboration and public input but at the end of the day the interests of the individual departments, their political power and funding sources trump cooperative efforts.  The dominate professional mindsets would rather have small changes in all areas instead of coming together to radically shift to sustainable integrative planning.

What the West Coast Green conference revealed was that human error hasn’t been factored into our energy efficiency solutions.  One person tasked to handle numerous elements of a three day event is going to make mistakes.  These mistakes could be avoided yet it requires skills that are currently not rewarded; asking for help, letting go of ownership and the status/identity that is wrapped up with it and working with others so that together our collective brilliance will shine.

Selecting one powerful group does nothing to move cooperation forward, it is simply a divide and conquer tactic that only leads to retaliation in the form of aggressive lobbying and an exhibition of political might. Is this common sense?  Is it more important to cling to convenience and comfort, to make it easier for smaller businesses to accumulate capital regardless of the environmental cost of doing business?

Money is a deciding factor for capitalism to survive. Our survival as a species is contingent on the environment. Competition may be the life blood of our capitalist system but it is cooperation that will support our evolution.