Climate change is the crisis of our time.
As the human race sleepwalks its way towards a planetary calamity, there is a growing recognition of the need for a “moonshot” aimed at addressing the greatest existential challenge we have ever faced. The immediate problem is that a solid technical basis for such a moonshot does not yet exist. There is no audacious U.S. national plan in place to deal with climate change, quite apart from what other countries must do.
What we must now do is to create a fully empowered national climate change agency, devoted exclusively
to climate change, with a mandate to prepare the carefully
thought-through technical basis for an audacious action plan and with
the political clout to make an impact.As the human race sleepwalks its way towards a planetary calamity, there is a growing recognition of the need for a “moonshot” aimed at addressing the greatest existential challenge we have ever faced. The immediate problem is that a solid technical basis for such a moonshot does not yet exist. There is no audacious U.S. national plan in place to deal with climate change, quite apart from what other countries must do.
How A Moonshot Happens
What is often forgotten in the celebration of America's space triumph of 1969 is that Kennedy’s speech of 1962, in which he inspired the nation to “go the moon by the end of the decade”, didn’t come out of the blue. In fact, the basis for it had already been laid in several distinct stages.
- Stage 1: Pre-1958: Several competing agencies were striving for ownership of the American space effort: space: Army, Navy, Air force; there was no coherent national strategy, game plan or budget.
- Stage 2: Creation of NASA in 1958: President Eisenhower established organizational clarity as to which agency was in charge of the space effort, but he didn't create the necessary priority or budget for the effort to succeed. It did nevertheless create the institutional and intellectual platform which provided the basis for the next step.
- Stage 3: President Kennedy's 1962 speech articulated a clear national commitment to get to the moon before the end of the decade.
- Stage 4: From 1962 to 1969, there was skillful maintenance and pursuit of the goal, through many difficulties, setbacks.
- Stage 5: In July 1969, as promised, American men landed on the moon—an unparalleled feat of perseverance and ingenuity.
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| Stages of launching a moonshot. Steve Denning |
Current Planning Is Inadequate
What’s happening now is sporadic, haphazard, ill-planned and tragically inadequate.
For example, as a sign of its commitment to climate change, Berkeley recently announced with pride that it has banned the use of natural gas in new low-rise buildings; this results in greater use of electricity generated by coal power plants with high pollution consequences.Having an institution that is capable of thinking through the multi-sectoral issues involved in assessing the trade-offs, the inter-connections and the sequencing of different options and pushing ahead to action is going to be central to having any kind of real impact. At this point, there is not a single official at the highest levels of U.S. government who can speak sensibly on the subject.
Similarly, people may feel virtuous if they purchase electric cars, but the impact on climate change isn't clear if the cars are also using electricity generated by coal. Flailing away at climate change with symbolic actions that feel good and sound good but make no impact isn't going to get the job done.
Wind and solar are often presented as the keys to the future. Yet there is no coherent policy as to their future in the U.S. Wind and solar energy have few downsides per se but are not available 24 hours every day; Europe has found that dealing with the ups and downs of production can create practical problems.
A carbon tax is widely advocated by economists, yet the U.S. is one of the few large and industrialized nations that does not implement one. The basis for it is simple. Carbon emissions have an "unpriced" societal cost in terms of their harmful effects on the earth's climate. A tax on carbon would reflect these costs and send a powerful price signal that would discourage carbon emissions. Such a tax could have regressive income effects, but they could be alleviated by the way the resulting revenues are allocated. Carbon tax has a diverse array of advocates including Rex Tillerson, when he was CEO of Exxonmobil, the American Enterprise Institute, the Earth Policy Institute, and the Sierra Club, and the Washington Environmental Council. Yet no carbon tax is in place in the U.S. and none is even being seriously discussed.
Drawdown
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| Drawdown by Paul Hawken Penguin |
The analysis contains quite a few surprises. Refrigerant management comes in at #1 while solar only ranks #8 and #10. Changes in household appliances doesn’t even make the top 80 options. Nor does natural gas make the top 80 options, even though the U.S. is leading the world in the reduction of CO2 through the conversion to natural gas. The question is not whether Hawken has everything right: his analysis shows the complex multi-sectoral nature of the issues. What does it all add up to?
On a “plausible” level of effort, the total amount of carbon dioxide avoided and sequestered is 1,051 gigatons by 2050, which is only two-thirds of what is needed to stop the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
With a much greater level of effort, “the drawdown scenario,” the increase could be effectively stopped by 2050.
With an even greater level effort, the level of carbon dioxide could be reduced by 170 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2050.
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| Options for dealing with climate change, from Drawdown by Paul Hawken Penguin LARGE IMAGE |
The book is helpful in mapping the territory of the options. “The overwhelming majority are no-regrets solutions, initiatives we would want to achieve regardless of their ultimate impact on emissions and climate, as they are practices that benefit society and the environment in multiple ways.”
It also notes several options for which we might have serious regrets if they were widely adopted, such as nuclear fission:
Nuclear [fission] is a regrets solution, and regrets have already occurred at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Rocky Flats, Kyshtym, Browns Ferry, Idaho Falls, Mihama, Lucens, Fukushima Daiichi, Tokaimura, Marcoule, Windscale, Bohunice, and Church Rock. Regrets include tritium releases, abandoned uranium mines, mine-tailings pollution, spent nuclear waste disposal, illicit plutonium trafficking, thefts of fissile material, destruction of aquatic organisms sucked into cooling systems, and the need to heavily guard nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years.The book only paints the global picture: each country, region and community will have to make its own set of choices from the larger menu. Not all countries have tropical forests; sunlight and wind vary considerably. Obviously, some options would have greater impact sooner, if there was a greater level of effort.
The Issue Is Political And Technical
In one sense, the central issue is political. Summoning up the political willpower to do whatever is necessary to redress the situation, aggressively implementing the solutions that are ready for implementation, while exploring a whole slew of promising new technologies.
The U.S. needs to rediscover its pioneer spirit and once again become an international leader rather than a laggard. The fact that the current U.S. administration sleeps at the wheel and allows the country to careen towards an avoidable calamity need not prevent us from getting ready to take the necessary next step—the creation of a federal agency to lay the basis for a national effort to fight climate change, while also inspiring other nations to do likewise.
Thus in another sense the questions are also technical. Politicians are not climate scientists. They are not going to be the ones to sort out the massive complexities described by Paul Hawken in Drawdown. Nor should they be. The role of politicians is to endorse and communicate carefully thought-through technical policies and plans developed by a wide array of climate scientists, economists, sociologists and management experts, working together as outlined here.
A Different Kind Of War
Make no mistake, we are caught in a deadly war. Nothing will happen unless and until we grasp the magnitude of the challenge we face and share the belief that we have the technology, the smarts, the innovative capability, in effect the will to win the war.
The problem with this war is that the enemy is ourselves. As I described here, the core of the problem is that the burning of hydrocarbons is the foundation of many of the huge improvements in the material well-being of the human race over the last century. As a species, our brains have been created to ignore risks that appear distant in time and place. Countering human nature is hard. There are also many vested interests in maintaining the status quo.
Winning The War
Winning the war will require deep changes in consumption, technology, behavior, attitudes and education as well as radically increasing efforts institutional and social innovation. That’s why we need a moonshot.
A moonshot implies a change in mindset. It means a shift from accepting our fate as defined by events and taking things into our own hands, believing that we can and will change the future. It’s about looking beyond what we currently see and envisioning answers that may seem unreasonable—and pursuing them anyway. It’s about doing things that sound undoable but if done will redefine everything.
We don’t want or need a climate scientist as president. Nor do we need a candidate with a personally crafted, detailed climate plan. What we need is a leader who has the smarts to grasp the nature and magnitude of the challenge and mobilize action to deal with it. We need a leader who is able to inspire and lead us to win this war. The first and most urgent action is the creation of a fully empowered national climate change agency.
We have done monumental things before, whether it was the actual moonshot with NASA, the Internet with DARPA and the nuclear fission with the Manhattan Project. In each case through a coordinated national effort, we were able solve huge problems through innovation that led to radically new technical solutions that changed everything. As Astro Teller said, we were able replace apathy with audacity:
The seemingly impossible can happen when passionate and talented people come together with urgency and determination. The secret? It’s easier to get people to work on making something 10X better than to get them to help make it 10% better. Huge problems fire up our hearts as well as our minds. When you’re aiming for a 10X gain, you have to find whole new ways of doing things, and lean on bravery and creativity — the kind that, literally and metaphorically, can put a person on the moon.The State Of The Current Political Debate
The space race was valuable far beyond its original goal: NASA’s work has led to dozens of technology breakthroughs with many everyday uses, and inspired generations of kids like me to fall in love with science and engineering. When the world’s problems make us feel small and helpless, we should reflect on the lessons the Apollo missions hold about human nature, and our ability to choose bravery over fear and set aside apathy in favor of audacity.
Listening to the debate among politicians about climate change today—or more often, the absence of debate—can be dispiriting. It brings to mind the poem written by W.H. Auden in 1939 at a time when a different kind of global crisis was in the offing.
Intellectual disgraceCreating another federal agency may not seem like a big deal. The day that we create such an agency the world will go on as before. It will be seen as something plodding, mundane, even boring. Only a few that think of it as day as one in which we did something unusual: a day that lays the basis for securing the future of the human race. Nor should there be any beating of drums or great celebration. The real work will still be in front of us. But something will have begun.
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Having an agency in place won’t solve the problem by itself. Periods of blistering heat and extreme weather events will continue to afflict us for years to come. But something significant will have begun. We will have created the basis for unlocking the hidden talents and aspirations of the human race to preserve the beauty of our world for our children and our grandchildren. As Auden said:
In the deserts of the heartLinks
Let the healing fountain start.
- The One Viable Solution To Climate Change
- Implementing The One Viable Solution To Climate Change
- Turn down the heat : why a 4°C warmer world must be avoided
- Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change
- A Roadmap For Reshaping Capitalism
- Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming
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