HER LEED

Picture a greeting card that shows a sketch of a person standing on the edge of a cliff that sharply drops off into the abyss; when you open the card the message reads: “An optimist enters the world.”

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.

Browsing the November issue of my favorite mind candy, Vanity Fair, I came across a short article about Carrie Fisher.  What struck me in her self deprecating expose’ was an insightful comment that spoke to our energy milieu, “If you claim something, you can own it. But if you have it as a shameful secret, you’re fucked; you’re sitting in a room populated by elephants.”

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.

San Francisco hosted the West Coast Green building conference last week at the historic Fort Mason Center. The conference theme, “you are brilliant,” fell flat when it came to integrating efficient transportation and bicycle parking into an event that waves a bright green banner.  This lack of brilliance was a talking point among participants, many of whom missed the key note speakers while they waited for the shuttle bus to arrive.

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.

Last week the EPA announced a proposal to tighten permitting fees for the largest greenhouse gas emitters.  Smaller industries that emit less than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year will not have to meet the EPA’s self-described “undue burden” of stiffer regulatory compliance. Yet stiff regulation for some and not for all actually prevents cooperation from occurring.  If we’re going to regulate greenhouse gas emissions it should be done across the board.  Singling out just the largest emitters while allowing smaller industries to continue emitting green house gasses doesn’t seem like the “common sense” approach stated by Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lisa Jackson.

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.