The Climate Crisis Future

Moving Heaven and Earth

Note: A version of this essay is frontpaged at the European Tribune.
UPDATE: and now on the "Rescued" list at Daily Kos.

It's hard to be hopeful about the Climate Crisis future. Accepting his Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth on Sunday, Al Gore made his pitch for confronting the climate crisis to one billion viewers worldwide. “We have everything we need to get started,” he said, “with the possible exception of the will to act. That’s a renewable resource. Let’s renew it.” And the Republican/Dirty Energy noise machine has been in high gear ever since, demonizing Gore and his Hollywood supporters, and engaging in even more ferocious Climate Crisis denying. Finding the kind of political will and effective leadership necessary seems only remotely possible.

Still, something pretty hopeful did happen in Washington last week, though little notice was taken. It's worth suggesting what it was and why it is hopeful, before I get to the last essay I planned in this series, speculations on what the future may hold, near and far.

The good news in Washington last week was the Apollo Summit for Clean Energy and Good Jobs, a meeting of the Apollo Alliance. If there is any hope for America's future, it will depend on what Apollo and that summit represents: the blue-green alliance of blue collar and environmentalists, and governors and mayors who make things happen, as well as national legislators who keep at it regardless of where the headlines are.

Doing It

While others argue, governors are acting. They know that most of the world is aware of the Climate Crisis, and that there is a growing need for clean energy technology. Not only because of the Climate Crisis, but the many other environmental and health disasters caused by or exacerbated by dirty energy and its byproducts. They see also the economic consequences of dependence on foreign oil and the loss of good jobs, and they foresee the future that Peak Oil will soon bring. So they are acting.

At the Summit, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick proclaimed his clean energy priority as a total package: "I don't just want the wind farms. I want the companies that build the turbines. I want the ones that assemble the hybrid vehicles and consult on the conservation strategies. I want the companies that design and manufacture the solar panels. The whole integrated industry ought to and can have a place in Massachusetts ... I really believe that if we get this right, the whole world will be our customer. "

Then Colorado Governor Bill Ritter said he had the same goals for his state. These governors have seen what Governor Ed Rendell did in Pennsylvania: his administration brought a company(Gamesa) into the state to build wind farms and manufacture turbines. An early member of the Apollo Alliance, Rendell worked with the Democrats' traditional ally in Pennsylvania, the United Steelworkers union, and he got legislation passed that guaranteed the Commonwealth would buy enough renewable energy to give Gamesa a minimum market base. The result will be 1,000 union jobs, many in manufacturing, and the beginning of a new industry with global implications.

As Rendell told the Summit: "What else can clean the environment, boost the economy, free us up politically in world affairs, make us better able to withstand a terrorist attack or natural disaster, and help us with our trade imbalance? There's nothing else, this ought to be our number one priority."

The Blue-Green (and other colors) Alliance

While these governors talked about jobs and economic opportunities, the important thing in hoping that this alliance can be sustained is that there is a strong committment to the environment as well: it appears to be a true alliance between blue collar and green. Carl Pope, the head of the Sierra Club, spoke at the Summit, along with Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, who said: "it's time for an environmental intervention."

This is crucial because environmentalists and those in the forefront of warning about the Climate Crisis have long been marginalized as a wealthy overeducated elite out of touch with the American public (an image that the Fox Noise Machine is currently promoting in attacking Al Gore and his "Hollywood" supporters.)

On the ground, many conflicts have arisen when big companies successfully pitted workers against environmentalists (as in the Timber Wars here in California and the Pacific northwest.)
But the blue-green Apollo Alliance shatters those images and those cynically-created conflicts. The blue-green alliance is politically potent, as it could well be the basis for reinstituting and reenergizing the traditional Democratic party blue collar base. But even more importantly, it could be the basis for economic progress as well as giving us a fighting chance for the future threatened by the Climate Crisis.

There's another important part of this alliance that must be noted. Part of the elitist image of the environmental movement has been that it is lilly white. But Jerome Ringo, the inspirational President of the Apollo Alliance, is black. So is Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts.

Alliance at All Levels

We are absorbed by conflict, and such headlines as there were from the summit emphasized the competition for clean energy jobs expressed by the governors. But it's more important to emphasize the strength in partnerships, and the breadth of this alliance and its potential power to transform the country and maybe even the world.

The above named are not the only governors committed to clean energy and battling the Climate Crisis. Nor were those named the only union, environmental organization and government officials present at the Summit.

Trenton, N.J. Mayor Douglas Palmer spoke, (note: that's Trenton, not Beverly Hills),representing more than 372 mayors from all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, that have signed onto the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Among them are mayors who are instituting clean energy programs and efforts to confront the Climate Crisis in their cities. They called for federal block grants to help them in their efforts. "we can no longer behave as if there aren't any consequences from inaction."

U.S. Representative Jay Inslee (WA) called the Apollo Alliance the "most important coalition" in America today, because "this is a matter of our American destiny ... to lead the world in solving this global warming crisis."

Senator Hillary Clinton spoke, as did Senator Bernie Sanders, who has introduced the most aggressive bill against global heating now in Congress. On the blue-green alliance itself, he said: "This is a marriage made in heaven. This is a marriage that will move heaven and earth."

All of this is encouraging and in fact could be crucial. But almost nobody reported on it, and the left blogosphere in particular was quiet about it, including clean energy advocates who have yet to become part of the alliance. Bill Scher of the Campaign for America's Future, a cosponsor of the Apollo Alliance, blogged about it at Huffington Post, which is how I learned about it. But he apparently felt it necessary to attract attention by highlighting the competition between governors for clean energy industries, using "battle royale" in his headline.

But the importance of this alliance isn't about competition (though undoubtedly that will drive some useful efforts)--it's about cooperation: working together in partnerships among groups that were indifferent or hostile to each other in the past.

Yet it is all the noise of charge and countercharge that gets the attention. The left blogs playing into the hands of the right by making Ann Coulter the political equivalent of Anna Nicole Smith, and by covering a convention of conservative Republicans in detail while ignoring this meeting of the hope of the Democratic party as well as the nation and the future.

Here's more on "green collar jobs" at Sentient Times.

Just what the perils may be of all of us ignoring the future is the subject of my final essay in this series.

The Climate Crisis

To Turn It Into Action

The heat is still on in much of the U.S. and Europe. St. Louis was declared a disaster area last week. Today the power grid in California is teetering due to demand in the hot zones where triple digit temperatures still rule. I'm not sure yet if it's power problems or our own telephone wires but our DSL has been down a lot lately, and my access to the Internet restricted. Just to let you know in case there are long absenses here.

For those of us clutching at hope, there was a heartening article in Sunday's SF Chronicle Insight by Mark Hertsgaard, adapted from his piece in The Nation. It's about Jerome Ringo, the chairman of the Board of the the 4.5. million member National Wildlife Federation, the largest enviro organization in America. Ringo is also the only African American to head such an organization, and he is also a former petrochemical worker. He's a living blue-green alliance.

"I am the first African American to head a major conservation group in history," he says. Most environmental groups, he adds, "were founded by people who fished to put fish on the wall, not by people who fished to put fish on the table. And for poor people, issues like ozone depletion have not been a priority, compared to next month's rent. But I tell people in Cancer Alley, 'What good is next month's rent if you're dying from cancer?' "

Ringo is one of the proponents of a new approach to environment in politics, Hertsgaard writes. He pecifies three changes of approach. First: a focus on economically attractive solutions rather than downbeat warnings of disaster... Second, using clear, plain language to communicate with everyone (the enviro organizations have been mired in regulationspeak for years, as they functioned as lobbyists and legal watchdogs), and third, strengthening local organizations to work politically on local and state levels. One of the inspiring moments in Al Gore's movie is the screen filled up with the names of cities that have pledged to act on the climate crisis (and a prideful moment too, to see our much maligned Arcata on it). Here's the heart of the article:

Part of what makes Ringo interesting is that he can credibly connect with all the constituencies needed to transform environmentalism into a genuinely broad-based movement. The National Wildlife Federation chairman can talk to whites and blacks, environmentalists and hunters, business leaders and union members, church-goers and secularists. And he recognizes that all of them benefit from an environmental policy that stresses both respect for the Earth and economic prosperity.

"The glue that connects the dots" is the fight against climate change, says Ringo. He argues that environmentalists can best pursue this battle by championing a green energy plan put forward by the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of environmental, labor and business groups of which he is the new president.

Apollo proposes investing $300 billion of public funds in green energy technologies during the next 10 years. This investment would create 3 million jobs and countless business opportunities, Apollo says, while also fighting climate change and cutting dependence on foreign oil.

It's a good time to be making this argument. Not only has global warming finally been widely acknowledged as an urgent problem, it is now undeniable that fighting it can be extraordinarily profitable. Beginning in 1999, energy giant British Petroleum invested $20 million to increase energy efficiency throughout its production facilities and offices. Three years later, it had saved $650 million in lower fuel costs -- a stunning thirtytwo-fold return on its investment.

Apollo says there is no reason that state and local governments and other public entities cannot cash in just as handsomely -- a message ready-made for the 235 cities that have committed to meeting the greenhouse-gas emissions reductions mandated by the Kyoto Protocol. Ringo spoke at the National Conference of Mayors in June about the Apollo program and got a standing ovation.

"Apollo began five years ago as a vision," he says. "My goal is to turn it into action."

The Blue-Green Alliance

Environmentalists have been stereotyped as overeducated upper middle class white people. When it comes to the bigger enviro organizations, the stereotype has not been far off the mark. But the brutal fact is that working people, people of color and poor people suffer disproportionately from pollution, chemical contamination in the workplace and the neighborhood, and toxic waste. We may hear nothing but casino casino, but the favorite dump sites for toxics are Indian reservations. Locate a Wal-Mart, and there is likely to be a toxic site nearby. This is apart from the general effect of pollution and the Climate Crisis on all of us.

Big Business, especially in extractive industries like timber and mining, have successfully turned blue collar workers against environmentalists, even though they have more common cause than reasons for emnity. Big Labor, otherwise casting a jaudiced eye on anything Big Business is for, have often cooperated in this illusory and counterproductive stance.

That's been changing slowly for some time, and today marks a watershed event in that change: the announcement of common cause made by the United Steelworkers of America and the Sierra Club, the biggest organizations (symbolically and actually) in their respective fields.

The New York Times says:After decades of fighting between blue-collar unions and green activists, the steelworkers and the Sierra Club say they will use the alliance to battle for energy independence and against global warming and toxic pollutants.

A central goal of the partnership, called the Blue/Green Alliance, will be to reassure workers that measures to improve the environment need not jeopardize jobs. "We're going to work together to try to blow up the myth that you can't have a clean environment and good jobs," said Leo Gerard, the president of the steelworkers union, which has 850,000 members.

In terms of the Climate Crisis, both organizations support the Apollo Alliance, which itself has brought together labor, industry and environmentalists, to promote new energy technologies and other technologies that will simultaenously respond to the Climate Crisis and other environmental challenges, while seeding the equivalent of a new industrial revolution in the U.S.

"Secure 21st-century jobs are those that will help solve the problem of global warming with energy efficiency and renewable energy," Mr. Gerard said.

Is Chicago Becoming the First City?

As the railroad hub of the U.S., the city of Chicago was instrumental in shaping this country's economy and social organization. Famous for its stockyards and its gangsters, Chicago was also where the consumer economy began, when mail-order outfits like Sears and Montgomery Wards used the railroads to supply individuals with products they'd seen as images, as dreams. As a port city and a worker's city connected by rail to the south as well as the east and west, Chicago has had to deal with racial and ethnic violence and diversity for over a century. It also not coincidentally became a model for American suburbia, with its radiating suburbs centered on shopping malls.

Now Chicago may be poised to lead the nation into its only viable future. According to TIME magazine, Mayor Richard Daley and his environmental comissioner Sadhu Johnston are working to turn Chicago into what [Johnston] claims will be the most environmentally friendly city in the U.S. — as well as the nation's center for environmental design and the manufacturing of components for the production of alternative energy. If it works — and Daley is betting a hefty sum it will, with promises to buy millions in solar panels, for example — the green movement here is expected to yield the city perhaps billions in saved energy costs and new business.

This is the kind of vision this country needs. Without it, the U.S. will find itself a second-class country in another decade, because other nations are moving ahead. If Chicago is successful, it will help not only North America but the rest of the world, owing to the size and influence of the American economy and popular culture.

In much the same way that cities like Austin and San Francisco latched onto the boom in the Internet or biotech industry to propel their economies, Chicago is working hard to rev up its manufacturing and capitalize on the growth in green construction and wind and solar energies.

Chicago has taken first successful steps--more rooftop gardens on downtown buildings than anywhere, emphasis on energy efficiency in the widespread and important operations of city government (nobody in Chicago forgets that mayors have lost their jobs for not clearing the snow efficiently) and in environmental design. Beyond this, the goals are lofty but there is promise. Chicago's goal to use renewable energy for a quarter of its operations has already attracted a couple of solar panel manufacturers to the area.

That city government is taking the lead is not entirely out of character. Private enterprise worshippers like to believe that government is only a barrier, but especially in paradigm changes, that's an illusion (if not a conscious lie.) Infrastructure enabled or even sponsored by government (notably highways) has been key to change in the past. Partly because renewable energy is often also decentralized energy, smaller units of government---like cities--can enable and sponsor this wave of change effectively.

TIME says that Green Bay, Wisconsin is already consciously copying Chicago's efforts. Rust belt cities with a tradition of manufacturing and a manufacturing workforce should take heart, and take a long look at efforts like Chicago's, or the plans of the Apollo Alliance. In the meantime, Chicago is to be lauded for daring to seize the future once again.