Warming up for bigger things

I just don't know. Every time I'm getting into a really juicy, self-pitying, blue political funk, some things come along to get in the way. There was Shrub's dropping approval, which admittedly isn't all that big a deal because of the lack of real alternatives out there (the Dims do not deserve that accolade) but still indicates that people might finally be getting fed up with the bullshit. There was the sense that we're slowly winning on Iraq. There was the at least implied approval of the constitutionality of federal regulations on media ownership.

And then there's this, from USA Today:

Don't look now, but the ground has shifted on global warming. After decades of debate over whether the planet is heating and, if so, whose fault it is, divergent groups are joining hands with little fanfare to deal with a problem they say people can no longer avoid.

General Electric is the latest big corporate convert; politicians at the state and national level are looking for solutions; and religious groups are taking philosophical and financial stands to slow the progression of climate change.

There are still a lot of ifs and buts in this, particularly on the question of what to do about global warming, and some of the corporate commitments seem, well, not what we might have hoped: The $1.5 billion a year GE proposes to spend is for research rather than action and the figure amounts to about 1.1% of its annual sales. Still, company chairman Jeffrey Immelt did make the announcement - with executives from American Electric Power, Boeing, and Cinergy standing alongside him.

Significantly, Cinergy executive Kevin Leahy said "On the business side, it just looks like climate change is not going away," calling it a problem that has to be managed. It may be their bottom line that they're interested it, but it's starting to sink in, particularly among energy companies and utilities, that climate change is going to have a real impact on that and they had better do something about it if only to avoid getting clobbered with massive restrictions later. That matters because

"[a]s big companies fall off the 'I don't believe in climate change' bandwagon, people will start to take this more seriously," says environmental scientist Don Kennedy, editor in chief of the journal Science.

Change is coming on other fronts, as well: For one example, socially conscious investor firms are starting to take policies related to global warming into account in their investment decisions and corporate activism. Just last month, Christian Brothers Investment Services, which advises Catholic institutions, spearheaded a stockholders' motion demanding that ExxonMobil justify its denial "of the broad scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels contributes to global climate change." It got 10.3% of shareholders' votes, representing shares worth more than $36 billion, despite the opposition of management. That's a very significant achievement.

To be sure, many companies - most notably oil industry leader ExxonMobil - still express skepticism about the effects of global warming. And the Bush administration has supported research and voluntary initiatives but has pulled back from a multi-nation pact on environmental constraints. ...

Nonetheless, the tides of change appear to be moving on.

And that is the significant part.

Footnote: James Dooley of the Battelle Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Maryland, was quoted as saying

"We need a whole series of 'home runs' and maybe even a couple of 'grand slams' to successfully address this problem. More efficient refrigerators, better and cheaper solar cells, hybrid automobiles, fuel cells, power plants that capture and store their (carbon dioxide) deep below the surface and nuclear power. They all have important roles to play."

"No one seriously talks about trying to address climate change with one technology," Dooley says. "Everyone understands that there isn't a 'silver bullet' out there waiting to be discovered."

There's good and bad combined in that statement. What's good is the somewhat belated recognition that there needs to be a variety of changes if we're to have any hope of having a livable environment and sufficiently limiting global warming so that what we face over the next century is merely bad instead of catastrophic. (Twenty-five years ago I proposed an energy policy based on regionally-appropriate, environmentally-sound renewable energy under the slogan "No One Answer.")

The bad part is two-fold: First is the embrace of nuclear power, a destructive answer to a destructive problem, as I noted the end of April. Presenting nukes as a response to global warming reminds me of the move back when I was in college encouraging cigarette smokers to switch to pipes: You usually don't inhale pipe smoke, the argument went, so it cut your risk of lung cancer. And it did - at the cost of sharply increasing your risk of lip, mouth, and throat cancers. I for one am not interested in "answers" that ultimately only propose to switch from one sort of environmental cancer to another. That is a very bad idea.

The other bad part is that it still sees any answers as found in new technology. It's as if we insist on saying "Don't worry, everyone: You'll still be able to have your SUVs and all your other power-hungry hi-tech goodies, all those vital necessities of everyday life we pitched you into getting hooked on. It'll be entirely painless, you won't have to do anything."

But the fact is, we will have to do something. There is no way we can deal with what's coming without lifestyle changes, some merely irritating, some potentially quite serious including dealing with more (and more severe) storms, droughts, and floods; weather-driven disruption of food supplies; and the very real possibility of having to step back from the ocean shoreline. It is pointless and even destructive to suggest otherwise. In the meantime, here is one non-technology step every one of us can take:

Use less! Whatever it is. Find ways to live with less of it.