Global climate change may be the most important challenge of our time. Twenty years from now our children and grandchildren will find it hard to understand how we fiddled away a half trillion dollars (and counting) in Iraq as the planet burned.
We believe that managing our climate predicament will require several things: clarity in understanding the scope, dimensions, and pace of the problem; creativity in engaging the range of viable resources for addressing the problem; and vision to imagine a tomorrow can be better than today. In presenting the 2007 Edmund Stanley Jr. Lecture Series we hope to make our small contribution to generating and disseminating the collective clarity, creativity, and vision that will be required.
We have brought together an important group of people - scientists, policy analysts, activists, and policy makers - to share with you their insights and their experience.
Climate Realism and Global Politics
Thursday April 19th, 2007To the extent that most Americans are thinking about global warming they are largely preoccupied with its impact on our economy and on our way of life. The prevailing public discourse is focused on balancing the need for action to reduce our carbon emissions with the costs of doing so. This is an important issue, to be sure, but it profoundly understates the real challenge that we face. Taking responsibility for our own direct contribution to the global problem is important, but it is not nearly enough.
Opponents of aggressive U.S. action make precisely this point when they cite emissions trends in China and India as reasons for the United States to move slowly, if at all, in capping our own emissions. Their point is that there is no U.S. solution to this global problem. Unfortunately this point avoids, rather than engaging the critical question: What is the global solution and what role should the United States play in helping to build and manage that solution?
Engaging this question requires us to drastically revise our understandings of the scale of the political challenges that face us, and also of the moral character of those challenges. Our guests in April are focused - in different ways - on bringing clarity and realism to this critical question.
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- Tom Athanasiou is an environmental writer and the co founder of Eco Equity (www.ecoequity.org). Eco Equity is a research and advocacy organization that is dedicated to the promotion of a just and adequate solution to the climate crisis. Among Mr. Athanasiou's publications are Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming (2002) and Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor (1996).
Dr. Arjun Mahkijani is the founder and President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (www.ieer.org). IEER provides activists, policy makers, journalists and the public with accurate and understandable scientific and technical information on energy and environmental issues. Dr. Makhijani, holds a Ph.D. in engineering with a concentration on nuclear fusion from the University of California at Berkeley. He is the principal editor of Nuclear Wastelands (2000) and the principal author of Mending the Ozone Hole, (1995), both published by MIT Press.
Daphne Wysham is a Fellow and board member of the Institute for Policy Studies, and is the founder and co-director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network (www.seen.org). The Sustainable Energy and Economy Network works in partnership with citizens groups nationally and globally on environment, human rights and development issues with a particular focus on energy, climate change, and environmental justice.
The Great Transition
Thursday May 17thConfronting the stark global challenge of climate change in a clear and realistic way - employing what the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci called 'pessimism of the intellect' - can be seriously dispiriting. It can be extraordinarily difficult to establish and sustain optimism in the face of the frightening social and environmental trends that prominently characterize the 21st century. Whereas the international system has been moving - slowly, but inexorably - towards greater openness, cooperation, and interdependence, the two most prominent global trends - global warming and global terror - each threaten the transformation of the planet into a fear-based system of fortressed societies.
This is apparent to those who have considered the future most carefully and thoughtfully. One such group has written:
The global transition has begun-a planetary society will take shape over the coming decades. But its outcome is in question. Current trends set the direction of departure for the journey, not its destination. Depending on how environmental and social conflicts are resolved, global development can branch into dramatically different pathways. On the dark side, it is all too easy to envision a dismal future of impoverished people, cultures and nature. Indeed, to many, this ominous possibility seems the most likely. But it is not inevitable.
Understanding how and why a 'better world is still possible' is an important element of generating the political will necessary for change - optimism is an indispensable political resource. Our guest in May is part of a group that have rigorously explored the great global transition that seems to be upon us, and emerged cautiously optimistic that a better world is still possible.
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- James Goldstein is a Senior Fellow at the Tellus Institute (www.tellus.org) where he directs the Sustainable Communities Program. Formed in 1976 as a not-for-profit research and policy organization, Tellus is an international leader in assessing critical environment and development issues. Mr. Goldstein will be speaking about the Institute's Great Transition Initiative. The Great Transition Initiative is a global network for elaborating visions and strategies for a future of enriched lives, global solidarity and a healthy planet. GTI's scholars and activists work to give texture, rigor and direction to the popular slogan "another world is possible." It builds on the work of the Global Scenario Group (GSG), which for a decade has been at the forefront of envisioning and analyzing alternative global futures. With a distinguished roster of 200 participants from over 40 countries, GTI is uniquely positioned to reach out to those seeking an improved understanding of global challenges and a positive framework for addressing them.
The Science and Politics of Climate Consensus
Thursday June 14thThis year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release its Fourth Assessment Reports, representing the current state of the international scientific consensus on climate change. The IPCC operates on the knife's edge of science and politics, within the limits imposed by scientific uncertainty on the one hand, and political will on the other. Accordingly it provides a unique perspective on what those limits will currently allow. This perspective can be invaluable in engaging and assessing the various efforts that are underway to address the problem. Our June guest will share with us his knowledge of the IPCC process and his views on the significance of its results.
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- Dr. Peter C. Frumhoff is Director of Science and Policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (www.ucsusa.org), and Chief Scientist of the UCS Climate Campaign. A global change ecologist, he has published and lectured widely on topics that include climate change impacts, climate science and policy, tropical forest conservation and management, and biological diversity. He is a lead author of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and was previously a lead author of the IPCC Special Report on Land Use, Land-use Change and Forestry.
California Dreaming? State Leadership on Climate Policy
Thursday July 19thIn the absence of federal leadership to address climate change, many states and regions have begun taking action on their own. States are setting targets for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, adopting policies to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency, and developing statewide climate action plans. The State of California is the acknowledged leader in addressing global warming. On September 27, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act. The Act caps California's greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by 2020, and represents the first enforceable state-wide program in the U.S. to cap all GHG emissions from major industries. It requires the California State Air Resources Board to establish a program for statewide greenhouse gas emissions reporting and to monitor and enforce compliance with this program. The Act authorizes the state board to adopt market-based compliance mechanisms including cap-and-trade, and allows a one-year extension of the targets under extraordinary circumstances. Our July speaker is especially well equipped to help us understand the politics and policy of state leadership on climate policy.
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- In November of 2003, Terry Tamminen (www.terrytamminen.com) was appointed as the Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, and in December 2004 he was appointed Cabinet Secretary, the Chief Policy Advisor to the Governor. He continues to advise the Governor on energy and environmental policy. He currently travels throughout the United States and the world, lecturing and providing private consulting services to a variety of clients, including several Governors and Canadian Premiers on climate and energy policy.
Campuses, Caucuses and the Climate Politics of the Future
Thursday August 16thState leadership on climate policy has operated within a leadership vacuum that has been created by at least two factors - an absence of accountability within our national leadership, and the absence of a genuine popular movement for change. Our August speakers are addressing these factors by leading grassroots organizing efforts in two high leverage socio-political contexts: college campuses, and the caucuses and primaries of the 2008 Presidential campaign.
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Billy Parrish is the Founder of the Campus Climate Campaign (www.climatechallenge.org), and Co-Founder and Coordinator for the Energy Action Coalition. The Campus Climate Challenge is a project of more than 30 leading youth organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada. The Challenge leverages the power of young people to organize on college campuses and high schools across Canada and the U.S. to win 100% Clean Energy policies at their schools.
Navin Nayak is the Global Warming Project Director of the League of Conservation Voters (www.lcv.org). the Global Warming Project is working to make global warming a priority issue during the Presidential primaries.
Different Shades of Green: Climate Change and Individual Agency
Thursday September 13thEveryone asks (usually somewhat plaintively) what they as individuals can do about climate change. It strikes us that this may be a proxy for another, subtler question - how should I respond to the prospect of planetary crisis - that gestures in the direction of fundamental questions about how to live a good life. At any rate, some folks have decided that what they can do is to help to organize the responses of others. Our guests in September are three individuals who are organizing responses in three different (but not necessarily incompatible) directions. We will explore with them the meaning that they've found in their choices and in the choices that they provide to others.
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- Lisa Wise is the Executive Director of the Center for A New American Dream (www.newdream.org), a civil society organization that helps Americans consume responsibly to protect the environment, enhance quality of life, and promote social justice.
Eric Carlson is Co Founder and Executive Director of Carbonfund.org (www.carbonfund.org) a civil society organization that educates the public about the dangers of climate change and makes it easy and affordable for individuals, businesses and organizations to reduce their climate impact. Eric has more than fifteen years experience promoting a better environment, with an extensive background in energy efficiency and climate change including managing international programs in Eastern Europe for the Alliance to Save Energy.
Steve Kretzman is the founder and Executive Director of Oil Change International (www.priceofoil.org), a civil society organization that campaigns to expose the true costs of oil, to facilitate the coming transition towards clean energy, and to overcome political barriers to that transition.