Two Methods To Tackle Climate Change: Start Now Or Do It Later

September 17, 2006 – Vol.11 No.26

TWO METHODS TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE: START NOW OR DO IT LATER.

Consider two ways to mitigate global warming. One, come up with a long term, 100-year-perhaps plan with no real goals, no specifics, and hope that others use it as a guide for the future. Or two, get on the phone and convince people, companies and organizations to find ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions today.

This week the Bush Administration published its long-term plan to tackle climate change. It’s dubbed the Climate Change Technology Program Strategic Plan. It’s 244 pages and it’s filled with ideas for the future: A hydrogen economy. Carbon sequestration. A reduction of non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases. Better monitoring and measurement of greenhouse gases. More research and development of clean technologies. Public/private partnerships to implement technologies. Voluntary action. Nothing much different than Bush has been saying for five or six years.

The Energy Department took four years to write the Plan. The next administration may scrap it and come up with a new one.

(It is not known if this is the final action President Bush will take on climate change. He may have something else up his sleeve.)

Former President Bill Clinton stepped up the podium this week to announce the results of his organization’s labors to tackle climate change. The results? Companies and organizations willing to put time, effort and money into the problem. If they don’t do it or start to do what they’ve pledged they won’t go to jail, but likely will get an angry phone call from Bill.

The most newsworthy pledge to the Clinton Global Initiative (which covers more than climate change) was for $3 billion spread out over ten years from Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin brand name. Virgin Fuels, as it is now known, is the biofuels division for research, development and commercialization of bio-transportation fuels. Appropriately the money will come from 100 percent of the profits from his transportation divisions such as Virgin Atlantic Airways.

But there were a total of 40 commitments so far, not just Branson’s. Here are four of them:

--- Urban-Climate & Energy Inc. will undertake research and design-development of its Heat Harvester technology. Heat Harvest is designed to capture and remove waste heat from air-conditioning systems. Waste heat will be transformed into zero-emission renewable energy, and energy equivalent (electricity and hot water).

--- Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) will install solar water pumping and small-scale irrigation systems in the KalalÈ District of Benin to grow vegetables and other crops during the dry season. SELF will also help farming families by expanding solar electrification for schools, clinics, streetlights, pumps for clean water, and micro-enterprise and communication centers.

--- Environmental Defense will develop a $6 million Carbon Fund to engage farmers and forest owners to emit fewer greenhouse gases while taking more out of the atmosphere. This pilot fund will emulate a cap-and-trade market for five to eight demonstration projects.

--- Global Green USA will apply green building design criteria, and where possible net zero energy and climate neutral strategies, to insure all school construction and renovation in New Orleans and Louisiana wrecked by Hurricane Katrina are built green.

(The remainder are at the website.)

And which is the better approach? At least one climate scientist James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has said that we have ten years to get greenhouse gases under control. (We don’t have a hundred years.)

For the Bush Administration’s plan visit the US Climate Change Technology Program at http://www.climatetechnology.gov/, for the Clinton Global Initiative visit http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/