Upgraded Possibility for Global Human Change
Posted on February 7, 2007 by oregoncub
Tags, Climate and Conservation
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a worldwide consortium of 2000 scientists and thinkers who have studied, synthesized and evaluated the scientific data available regarding climate change, have come out with their fourth report. In it, they have upgraded the probability that the changes we see in our climate are due to human activities, to over 90%.
The IPCC’s first report came out in 1990. In the 17 years since then their knowledge base has grown, global changes have accelerated, and our understanding of this dilemma is coming of age, as are our strategies for addressing it. Young Britons who were just being born when the first IPCC report was released are now being readied to face the challenge (from NGO Stop Global Warming): “As part of a year-long environmental education campaign to combat global warming, Al Gore’s documentary will be sent to every secondary school in England, over 3,385 schools.”
Beyond what each of us can do to address our own fossil fuel consumption, CUB is addressing the threat of global warming in the following ways:
1) We successfully opposed PacifiCorp’s attempt to get PUC approval of plans to build 2 new coal plants, a major emitter of carbon emissions, linked to global warming. PacifiCorp has indicated it will issue a Request for Proposals on the coal plants anyway, so this battle is far from over.
2) We participate in utility resource planning at the PUC to ensure that investments in energy production are safe and stable for the long term, and this includes both environmental and financial impact on customers.
3) We are working in the Oregon Legislature to pass a Renewable Energy Standards agenda, which includes a 25% renewable power by 2025 component, along with common sense energy efficiency measures and extensions of tax credits to developers installing renewable energy sources.
4) We are working in the Oregon Legislature on a carbon agenda which would bring the issue of global warming to the forefront of discussions regarding state policy decisions regarding energy, where it belongs.
5) We advocate and inform on national issues that affect Oregon utility customers. For example, Congress has begun, suddenly with increased numbers and enthusiasm, to tackle clean energy issues. This is perhaps most apparent with the news, from industry newsletter Clearing Up, that “At least four key U.S. Senators made it clear last week that they believe the war against global warming should begin with the utility industry ... Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) ... and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) ... said they plan to introduce a bill this week that focuses solely on reducing emissions from the electric utility industry. The measure ... would cap carbon dioxide emission from power plants at 2001 levels by 2015.” The article goes on to say that Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Boxer, both Democrats from California, have each introduced their own clean energy bills aimed at decreased greenhouse gas emissions.
A Boston Globe columnist claimed in a column today that to cap emissions was “to arrest economic growth.” We think this “economy or the environment” setup is a false choice, since a healthy economy on an unlivable planet is not a realistic win. We agree also with Lewis & Clark Economics Professor and Founding Director of the Greenhouse Network, Eban Goodstein, that this is a false choice, because addressing the challenges of global warming and other environmental issues can create opportunities for economic growth.
One of the burgeoning clean energy industries is obviously wind power. The status of another, solar energy, was discussed recently in the Northwest Energy Coalition’s Transformer: “PVs have become big business, with about $7 billion in worldwide sales in 2004. Manufacturing costs plummeted about 30 percent from 1999 to 2003, although demand is so great that local dealers have seen rising sales prices over the past year for the hard-to-come-by panels.” Although the Coalition concedes that installation costs for solar can still seem comparatively high to fossil-drenched First World consumers, still, they say that “Given the historical improvement in technology, it is quite likely that solar PVs will soon be the least-cost choice for utilities serving many sun-drenched cities.”
CUB hopes to help steer such positive alternatives to “business-as-usual” fossil fuel electricity production into reality. We aren’t the United Nations—we’re just trailblazing Oregonians, but we have upgraded the probability that the changes in energy production that we seek are possible, to over 90%.
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03/10/17 | 0 Comments | Upgraded Possibility for Global Human Change