Today, all over the world, bloggers are writing about climate change as part of Blog Action Day.

MOTHER EARTH NEWS is participating in this event for the third year in a row, and as it happens, we write about climate change all the time!

So, for a quick look at this important issue, here are three of our recent articles we think are helpful in understanding the problem and thinking about possible solutions. 

1. Climate Change and Your Garden. For gardeners everywhere, the issue of climate change is getting personal. Here’s how changing climate patterns are affecting what you can grow in your garden.

2. The Amazing Benefits of Grass-fed Meat. Here’s a piece of the climate change puzzle you might not have heard before. Raising cattle on grass instead of grain (and buying grass-fed meat) can help sequester carbon, build more fertile soil, and produce healthier meat — all at the same time.

3. A Plan for the Solar Revolution. Burning fossil fuels is a big part of the problem. Renewable energy is a big part of the solution. 

(And for the MOTHER-lode of information on global warming, you can find all the climate change articles we’ve ever written here on our website.)

Global warming (or climate change) is still one of the most hotly debated topics today — it seems there’s no end to the research and opinions on the topic. And it’s not just a rhetorical exercise. Much of the debate revolves not just around whether or not we’re to fault (or to what degree), but also regarding what we’re going to do (or not do) about it. With facts and “facts” appearing in books, blogs, the nightly news, and print and online media, it can be a challenge to find reliable sources for information. What books, websites, news anchors or other resources do you go to for the information you need to make informed, intelligent decisions about global warming?

Photo by: iStockphoto

This week President Barack Obama pushed the issue of climate change at the Group of 8 summit in Italy.

The United States and European countries, such as Germany, England, France and Italy proposed an agreement that called for worldwide emissions to be cut by 50 percent by 2050, with industrial countries cutting their emissions by 80 percent.

The industrial nations such as China, Brazil, India and Mexico did not agree to the proposal.

“They’re saying, ‘We just don’t trust you guys,’ ” said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, to the New York Times. “It’s the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president.”

The New York Times also reported that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, the meeting’s host, said it made little sense for Group of 8 countries to take on onerous commitments if “five billion people continue to behave as they have always behaved.”

Instead the group came to an agreement that the global temperature should not rise more than 2 degrees Celsius, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, but did not demand any commitments on how nations will do their part to ensure that goal is reached.

The fact that developing countries will not agree to major climate change reform means there is a lot of work still to be done before the worldwide climate treaty conference in Copenhagen this December.

During President Barack Obama’s White House Press conference yesterday the focus was mostly on Iran and health care reform, but he also commented on the House climate energy bill.

The bill written by Democratic Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts is scheduled for a House floor debate and vote on Friday.

President Obama fully endorsed the bill called it “extraordinarily important.” He urged members of the House to pass the bill and said it would make the U.S. a global leader in clean energy technology.

The bill includes a cap-and-trade system for green house gas pollutants and funds new clean energy projects such as geothermal, solar and wind.

It is unclear if the vote is likely to pass since there is nearly no Republican support and some wavering from moderate Democrats from farm states.

For more a simple break down of what’s in the bill go to Grist and for the latest information about what is happening on Capitol Hill check out Politico.

PHOTO BY ISTOCK/JAN WILL

While Congress continues to consider climate legislation (see Gore Says this is the Year for Action on Climate), some scientists and scholars — believe it or not — still debate about whether or not the global warming issue is real. There is even a government website (the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works) that debates the topic, as if it’s something that still needs to be debated over. Climate Debate Daily also lists arguments for and against the idea of global warming. My personal favorite response to the debate comes from the Canada Free Press: “They’ve given carbon dioxide (CO2) a bad name and it is now being hanged by draconian and completely unnecessary legislation.”

It’s hard to believe that there are still people out there that won’t grasp the fact that humans can and do have an affect on our environment. Yes, the Inhofe EPW Press Blog has been able to find 650 international scientists to speak out against global warming. But many of these scientists aren’t credible on the climate topic, like this blog on Grist magazine quite logically shows, by comparing the credibility of these skeptical scientists to the credibility of just any doctor on the treatment of cancer. It’s always best to find the answers to problems from actual experts. Environmental scientists prove again and again that global warming is manmade, like the evidence in this Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that says “There is very high confidence that the net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming.” Or like the evidence in this RealClimate article.

But whether you do or don’t “believe” in global warming, it’s a good idea to research both sides of the debate, especially if you’ve found yourself lost when trying to gather up a not-too-condescending response to co-workers, friends or even — in my case — to family at Christmas dinner. That way, the next time the issue comes up, the evidence can prevail and the debate will be finished in time for you to enjoy your post-break-room or post-dinner cup of coffee.

Former Vice President Al Gore addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Wednesday, telling them that America needs a climate bill this year, especially since there’s supposed to be an international negotiation in Copenhagen in December. Gore already has a bold plan — to reach a goal of 100 percent clean electricity within 10 years. And with President Barack Obama in office, this may be the year to go through with it.

On Gore’s Repower America website, you can find the detailed plan on how he believes America could reach this goal through use of plug-in cars, clean electricity and, of course, renewable energies. The first thing on the list — just like in Obama’s inauguration speech — asks for a little help from everyone. So, start by looking at the site, and then think about following the advice on the site by writing to your elected officials and telling them that you want the economic recovery package to focus on new jobs and clean energy. Like both Gore and Obama have said and continue to say, it’s going to take everyone to make the change that you want in our economy and environment. So, start now!

In a teleconference on Dec. 11, Lester Brown (from the Earth Policy Institute) weighed in on the realities of a green economy. While experts in Washington are looking at the issue from a national perspective, the Earth Policy Institute is looking at it from a more global, long-term standpoint. Brown referred to it as “not just a stimulus package, but an opportunity to begin cutting carbon emissions and reducing oil imports.”

According to Brown, in order to avoid a 20-foot rise in sea level, emissions need to be cut 80 percent by 2020. “If we wait until 2050, it will be too late,” Brown says. “Time is the scarcest resource.” 

Through renewable energies such as wind power, solar cells, solar thermal and geothermal power there is a large opportunity for us to cut emissions and grow our economy in the near future. There are already 24,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity in production, and that number is expected to increase by another 8,000 by next month. Last year, 200 megawatts of solar cell generating capacity were installed, and the construction of another 800 megawatts is already contracted. Eighteen new solar thermal plants are in development stages, which will total over 4,000 megawatts of energy — a 12-fold increase from just a year ago. There are now 96 geothermal energy plants in the planning stages, with an 8-fold growth in the next few years. And all of these renewable energy opportunities are two to four times more labor intensive then coal.

Hybrid and battery-powered cars are also on the rise. While manufacturing is still quite minimal, President-elect Barack Obama wants 1 million of these vehicles on the road by 2015. Brown suggests a tax incentive of $10,000 for those citizens willing to switch over. The difference in gas prices would help cover the cost of the incentive, as a 20-mpg car burns about 5,000 gallons over a lifetime, compared to a 100-mpg car, which burns only 1,000.

Brown predicts that a large portion of the funding for these technologies will come from private investors. With 400 billion dollars from the private sector and 100 billion from the government, 600,000 jobs could quickly be available, lasting through 2020. The good news is everything can be done with existing technologies, and even those can be improved in the years ahead. Now, we just have to continue expanding the use of renewable energies. If we do this, the atmospheric carbon levels could stabilize by 2020. Then, we can start thinking about ways to reduce them.

On Dec. 15, President-elect Barack Obama announced his energy and environment team at a news conference in Chicago. Obama chose Carol Browner, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as head of a new policy council for climate, environment and energy issues. The rest of the team consists of Steven Chu, a Noble-prize winning physicist, as his energy secretary; Lisa Jackson, former head of New Jersey’s environmental protection department, as national EPA head; and Nancy Sutley, deputy mayor of Los Angeles, as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

With the team in place, Obama is ready to start creating a new energy economy. He admitted that he didn’t know when the economy would start getting better, but he did say, “We know that we’re going to create jobs that wouldn’t otherwise be created.” According to Obama, those jobs should eventually add up to 2.5 million.

While Obama plans to make the United States a leader in climate change, he admits, “The solution to global climate change must be global.” The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland just finished on Dec. 13, claiming that there is “a clear commitment from governments to shift into full negotiating mode.” Hopefully, they’re right.

To learn more about Barack Obama’s energy and environmental policy watch the video below, or check out these articles:

Environmentalists Help Obama Create New Green Economy

Obama Addresses Fight Against Climate Change

Obama's Changing Climate Change

PHOTO BY ALEX SLOBODKIN/ISTOCKPHOTO

Now that Obama has been elected, the question everyone's asking is — what’s next? There’s a lot of curiosity about what he’ll do as president to address the related issues of clean energy and climate change.

The good news is that Obama has already pledged serious action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting the use of renewable energy. But there are a lot of questions still to be answered. Just as a starting point, here are three articles I ran across this week that are asking interesting questions about climate, energy and politics.

• First, I saw this article in Time which asks: Is Obama’s Energy Plan Enough? This is eye-opening. The question is — even though Obama is prepared to take big steps on energy and climate, is his agenda ambitious enough to address the scale of the problems?

• Here’s a related question from a recent article on Gristmill, What’s the Magic Number? Ouch, this one is scary. It concerns the ultimate safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Many leading scientists argue that its 350 parts per million (ppm). Unfortunately, we’re already at 380 ppm. According to the author, Joseph Romm, it’s going to take a World War II level of effort to stabilize the climate. (More on that here. No surprise: it would involve a lot of renewable energy.) The big question here is — is the general public willing to make that kind of an effort?

• And there’s a good description of that problem on the Dot Earth blog, which wonders Is the World in Obama’s ‘Shock and Trance’ Mode? Apparently, in the recent 60 Minutes interview Obama suggested that with falling energy prices, the world was moving from “shock” mode to “trance,” or complacency. He said that while energy remains high on his agenda, already there’s not as much political support for the kind of changes that are necessary. (Here’s more from the interview.) The author of this article wonders if it’s going to take a Katrina-level climate event to wake us up from our energy trance. Eek.

But back to the good news. Not only is Obama pledging to act on climate change, he’s also leaving the door open to better solutions to our biggest problems. Obama’s new Web site asks Americans to submit their best ideas on different policy issues. So if you have something to say about climate or energy, check out the energy and environment page and let your voice be heard.

Friday is the last day to participate in Repower America’s campaign to encourage the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide pollution, a major contributor to global warming. Repower America advocates 100 percent clean energy use in 10 years.

Cathy Zoi, Repower America CEO, sent an action alert e-mail urging supporters to post comments, which will appear on the EPA Web site.

The EPA will rule on whether it considers carbon dioxide and other pollutants a danger to public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide if it harms public health and welfare in April 2007.

The court ruled five to four that the EPA violated the Clean Air Act by not regulating new-vehicle emissions standards to control pollutants contributing to global warming.

"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

Repower America has been critical of the Bush administration for taking the side of oil and coal lobbyists on the issue of global climate change, but thinks the new Obama administration will be more receptive to the public comments.

If you have an opinion on the EPA’s decision, comment by Friday, Nov. 28.

Welcome to a new chapter in climate change! On Tuesday, Nov. 18, more than 600 climate change leaders from around the world gathered at the Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles to discuss climate issues and prepare for next month’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland.

While President-elect Barack Obama did not attend — “the United States has only one president at a time” — he addressed those in attendance through a short video, still promising to establish a federal cap-and-trade system, reduce emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and invest $15 billion a year for clean energy.

Of course it won’t be easy, but finally there’s going to be someone in office that refuses to ignore climate change: “Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response.” And that’s reassuring enough — for now at least.

Read Obama’s Changing Climate Change for more information. Or watch Obama’s video below.

In a recent press release, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) announced that it is ready for President-elect Barack Obama — especially after the Bush administration ignoring international progress on climate change for the past eight years. Not only does Obama argue for progress, he says he wants to find a common solution to our energy, environmental and economic problems. To do that, he says he wants to build a clean energy economy which will create millions of new jobs, expand capital investment, stop the nation’s dependence on oil, and prevent global warming.

To start, Obama’s cap-and-trade policy would require all permits for emitting carbon dioxide to be auctioned off, with proceeds going towards clean energy, habitat protections, and other transition relief for families. Last month, six of the 10 Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative states in the Northeast raised $39 million doing just that, and if that price holds, the auctions could yield more than $500 million a year.

The soon-to-be President also has outlined plans to reduce global warming emissions by 80 percent by 2050. He’s pledged to make 10 percent of the nation’s electricity come from renewable energy sources by 2012 and 25 percent by 2025. According to UCS analysis, if just 20 percent of the nation’s electricity comes from renewable sources by 2020, it could generate 185,000 new jobs; gain $66.7 billion in private capital investment; give $25.6 billion to rural landowners for leasing their land for biomass and wind energy production; and create $2 billion in new local tax revenues. On top of that, consumer electric and natural gas bills would reduce by $10.5 billion in 2020 and $31.8 billion in 2030.

And when all of this happens, it would reduce global warming emissions in 2020 by 223 million metric tons a year — the same as taking 36 million cars off the road. Now, that’s a change I think everyone could handle.

In February 2007, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that Antarctica was the only continent that did not show signs of climate change. However, recent studies published by Nature Geoscience prove that global warming has in fact made Antarctica warmer.

After comparing 100 years of Arctic temperature data and 50 years of weather records from 17 Antarctic weather stations, scientists concluded that arctic temperatures have warmed about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and Antarctic temperatures warmed about 1.8 degrees. But Antarctica could be even warmer than that. Researchers may have underestimated the temperature change due to readings from the cold continental interior — where there have been observations of cooling in the spring and summer months as a result of the ozone hole.

According to an article in Scientific American, one quarter to one half of the Antarctic coastline has shown substantial warming. The Larsen B and Wilkins ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula have already collapsed. If the eastern and western shelves melted completely, sea levels would increase by as much as 230 feet. Unfortunately, while the consequences of global warming are starting to be addressed, things will still get worse before they get better.

Climate change wasn’t even a figment of Henry David Thoreau’s imagination when he was living at the start of the Industrial Revolution, but his observations are proving valuable to climate change researchers today. Between 1851 and 1858 Thoreau recorded observations of approximately 500 species of plants and flowers near Concord, Mass. And though Thoreau never would have guessed it, researchers from Boston University and Harvard have been able to use Thoreau’s observations to discern changes in the climate from the 1850s to today, many of which aren’t good.

Even though fans of the author still can go visit Thoreau’s Walden pond, many of the actual plants and flowers that he wrote about won’t be seen by today’s audience. Because of climate change, a number of species are blooming seven days earlier, and many have actually disappeared. According to the New York Times, 27 percent of the species that Thoreau observed are gone and another 36 percent will soon be. And it’s not only the plants that are affected. The researchers also have found that birds are continuing to change their migration patterns because of climate change, which may be a problem if they are no longer in sync with the insects that they feed upon.

Scientists hope to continue to use the observations of Thoreau and others in their research on climate change. They specifically plan to look at which species are moving into Concord to occupy niches where some have vanished and whether or not those species are related to one another. Whatever they find, it just shows that historic documents really can make a difference in understanding today’s ever-changing world.

Climate change getting you down? If you've ever wondered if humanity can really do anything about greenhouse gas emissions, watching David Letterman's recent rant about climate change may help you get it all out of your system. (You can find it here on The Huffington Post. The quick summary: We are dead meat.)

But this week I’ve been feeling more optimistic, and for good reason. On Tuesday and Wednesday I attended the Kansas State Energy Conference to learn more about what’s happening locally and nationally on different energy issues. As part of that, I was lucky enough to get to hear the keynote address from one of the leading experts on climate science, Dr. James Hansen.

Don’t get me wrong, no one is likely to walk away from a lecture on climate change with a rosy view of the Earth’s future. It certainly wasn’t all good news. But at the same time, Hansen wasn’t saying that we’re dead meat or that it’s already too late. Instead, his message was that we still have time to act.

However, it’s a narrow window. We need to take serious action immediately, and it sounds like we’re talking about some pretty major steps — such as figuring out how to get off of coal completely unless we can figure out how to capture and store the carbon. There’s a great article from Hansen here on the Worldwatch Institute Web site with much more information on his views on climate.

Another bright spot: It was exciting to be at the conference and see how much is already happening in the world of wind power. There are a lot of new wind turbines being installed here on the Great Plains and in other windy spots around the world. Let’s keep them coming.

Photo by RUSTY DODSON/ISTOCKPHOTO

Climate change fills the news channels right now and arrests the attention of people all over the world. The statistics and, more importantly, the images are startling. The average global temperature has been going up since 1850 and is accelerating. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are all at historic highs.[1] These so-called “greenhouse gases” allow the sun’s ultraviolet radiation to rain down on the earth’s surface, but they trap the infrared radiation emitted by the warm earth. The planet warms up.

Take a look at any historic comparison of alpine glaciers or polar ice caps. They are shrinking. Rapidly.

 Most scientists agree that human beings are causing global warming. We dig up fossil fuels and burn them, releasing carbon dioxide. We blanket our agricultural fields with nitrogen-based fertilizers that fill the air with nitrous oxide. We raise billions of agricultural animals in circumstances that create unnatural amounts of methane. We burn the forests and plow up the grasslands that used to capture carbon dioxide from the air and deposit it in the soil. Rich people are making the biggest contribution to these problems. According to CNN, the average American's annual carbon footprint is about 2,000 times greater than that of the average resident of the African nation of Chad. And the average resident of the UK will generate as much atmospheric carbon dioxide in one day as a Kenyan will in an entire year. Overall, the United Nations estimates that the carbon footprint of the world's 1 billion poorest people represents just 3 percent of the global total. Of all the carbon dioxide deposited in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, 80 percent of the world's emissions was generated by 20 percent of the inhabitants of the world's wealthiest nations.[2]

It is, therefore, tempting to think that we can solve the climate-change problem by tightening the belts of the rich. But I’ll reiterate the conclusion of my rough analysis of this situation: If the U.S. and Western Europe both cut their per capital energy consumption in half over the next 20 years and the developing world holds its per capita consumption steady, we’ll keep on emitting greenhouse gases at the same harmful rate we are emitting right now. Population growth will erase all our progress.

Furthermore, even if none of our planet’s new human residents owns an internal-combustion engine, they will still need to burn wood and plant gardens. Deforestation and desertification are symptoms of human overpopulation, and those symptoms are spreading.

Have something to say about global warming? How does it affect you? Your life? The world around you and its inhabitants? 

Put your thoughts into a 200- to 500-word essay (or take a photograph that says it all) and submit it to the Union of Concerned Scientists for a chance to be published in their new online book, Thoreau’s Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming. 

To read the contest guidelines and/or view examples of submissions, click here.

Photo by Clint Spencer/iStockphoto

Tim Posey lived in a former barracks bought surplus from the U.S. Army at Fort Bliss, Texas, and moved a few miles into the dusty, unpaved village of Anapra, New Mexico in the late 1950s. Most of Tim’s 10 acres was devoted to his business – the Posey Trailer Park. But at the center of his property, surrounded by the trailers and the sand hills, Tim Posey’s homestead teemed with life. Milk goats bleated under a shed. Chickens scratched in the shade. Miraculously, two dozen kinds of vegetables sprung in abundance from the sand behind the horse stable. Past middle-aged, heavy and stiff with arthritis, Tim spent most of his time on a kitchen chair under one or another of the awnings he had built against his barns. He watched the animals, sharpened his tools and visited with his tenants when they stopped by. I remember him in dark sunglasses. I almost never saw him indoors.

I was 9 when Mr. Posey “hired” me. I lived a quarter-mile away with my family. The livestock and the garden drew me like magnets. Once I was certain he wouldn’t chase me off, I started spending nearly every spare moment there. He asked me if I wanted to learn how to milk the goats. Then he asked me if I was willing to do it every day. He paid me in produce, eggs and goat’s milk. My dad paid me cash for the food. It was my first job, and I loved it.

There are places on the continent more barren than the Chihuahuan desert, but not many. Creosote and mesquite bushes dot the sand hills. Most of the plants have spines or thorns. We called the surrounding landscape hills, but they were more like dunes. If you leave a junked car on the downwind side of a hill there, it will disappear under the sand in a few years or a few months, depending on the weather.

Mr. Posey boarded horses. He raised chickens, guineas, milk goats and honeybees.

I don’t know how long he had been moving manure from the chicken pens and horse corrals into the vegetable garden, but he had created a marvel there. Watermelons grew huge and dark green in the tangles of vines. On the ground between the rows of corn was a kind of moist wonderland of dappled light buzzing with insects.

It’s hard to describe the emotional impact of encountering all that life in the context of our garbage-strewn village in the middle of the desert. One person had taken a small piece of land, raked out the broken glass and old bleach bottles, added manure and created a small, earthly paradise. It captured my heart.

I helped Mr. Posey mix a potent fertilizer from chicken manure and water, a slurry that could be mixed with the irrigation water he pumped into the garden. I gathered the eggs. I milked the goats. I don’t remember many sweeter moments, in my life, than walking from my home to the goat pens in the cool early morning, smelling the creosote bushes, then the goats, then the sugary aroma of cracked corn and the warm, delicious odor of new milk. Sometimes we let the goats out into the open desert where they browsed blue gramma grass, mesquite beans and acacia leaves. I loved watching them shop among the plants for those they found most appetizing. The technical term for the way a goat eats is “browsing,” and it’s a perfectly accurate description. They are like shoppers in a supermarket, and even in the desert they seemed to find plenty of goods. While the goats were out of their pen and the gate left open, the chickens and guinea hens moved in and, scratching and clucking, found a feast of their own. I could never tell exactly what they were eating. They probably found scraps of grain and alfalfa, maybe tiny insects attracted by the animals and the manure.

From the chicken pen to the garden to the watermelon; from the mesquite beans to the goat’s udder to my breakfast cereal, I became an eye-witness to an alchemy that struck me then – and strikes me now – as magical.

I thought of Tim Posey as a sort of magician, a magus whose rituals of feed, fertilizer and irrigation catalyzed mystical transformations. I wanted to learn how to practice that magic.

Religions from the dawn of recorded history worshiped the sun. Solar energy is the source of all life. Petrochemicals are created from solar energy banked millions of years ago from plants that captured sunlight and photosynthesized useful carbohydrates. Plants died in oxygen-depleted water where they couldn’t decay, for lack of oxygen, and were eventually absorbed into the earth’s crust where over a long period of time the pressure and temperature transformed them into crude oil and natural gas. When you burn a piece of wood in the fireplace, you’re releasing solar energy stored by the tree. Our varied diets are basically made up of solar energy stored in a variety of forms – meat, vegetables, candy bars and fruit juice – by plants and animals who originally accumulated that energy for their own use.

The energy in oil, like the energy in corn, like the energy in Chicken McNuggets, like the energy in coal, originated in the sun.

And the sun keeps shining, showering the earth with useful energy. All living things benefit.

The first "green revolution" was inspired by industrial agriculture. We have, remarkably, found ways of feeding a human population that has expanded exponentially for hundreds of years.

A second “green revolution,” is sprouting now. In my newspaper on the morning I write this, the CEO of GE and the CEO of Wal-Mart are both featured, in separate stories, talking about their companies’ environmental policies. Who would have imagined, just 10 years ago, that the most powerful business leaders in the world would ever publicly proclaim their environmental concern? “Green” has evolved from a color, to a metaphor for fecundity, to a symbol for environmental health. Now we talk about “green” technologies and “greening” our homes. The word is a color, a verb and a noun denoting a certain kind of person. Marketers and politicians pragmatically discuss how to appeal to “the greens” – that is, people who are very concerned about protection of the environment.

The word, as an adjective, is used mainly to denote the negative. A “green” car is not a car that creates something, literally, “green.” Nor is it usually painted green. It’s a car that consumes less fuel and produces less pollution. A “green” house is not a house with a fine garden. It’s a house that uses less energy. Our various green initiatives – political, civic, social and corporate – moderate the damage we are doing. They don’t, generally, eliminate it.

So let’s say we created a sort of worldwide, per capita damage index where a person’s lifestyle was assigned a number that coincided with the environmental cost of that lifestyle. The number 1,000 symbolizes the most egregiously excessive lifestyle of the California trust-fund billionaire with seven enormous homes, two personal jets, eight children, a bunch of big cars, horses, yachts, you name it. The number 10 symbolizes the ascetic Tibetan monk growing enough food for his own simple diet of lentils and greens in the plot below his mountainside temple.

Everybody gets a positive number. Every human life (and any other kind of life for that matter) contributes, in at least a small measure, to the consumption of the planet’s resources. The Tibetan monk’s lifestyle is as “green” as a human lifestyle gets, but the monk’s net contribution to the world’s environmental problems is still a net subtraction.

The good news is, the miraculous biological machine we call the Earth is making more natural resources with each passing minute. We are, by the laws of nature, entitled to be here and a lot of us can live here as long as the temperature remains relatively stable and the atmosphere remains intact. We can live here because the sun keeps on showering energy on the planet – energy we convert into life. As life utilizes the sun’s energy it is broken down, gradually, into less and less energetic forms. The sun represents the most powerful physical entity in our realm of experience. We can conceptualize bigger stars, supernovas and black holes, but every morning our brightest beacon rises over the eastern horizon.

About 2,000 to 3,000 years ago monotheism emerged as humanity’s answer to the tribal conflicts that were consuming human lives and destroying natural resources. Over the course of a few centuries most of humanity converted to brand new systems of belief – either Judeo-Christian, Islamic or Buddhist. Among other benefits, monotheism allowed us to cooperate more successfully in larger groups. When every village had its own deities, the gods were always telling us to go kill the people over the hill so we could take their stuff. Monotheism helped us get past that. 

I believe that we are at another turning point and that the vision we need today is, at its root, a spiritual vision. Since we’re the only species that perceives its impact on the habitat, we have a sacred responsibility to protect it for our own sake as well as the sake of the biological system as a whole. The gospels of monotheism – Christian, Jewish and Moslem – place this “responsibility” on us, sometimes translated as “dominion.” Gradually, we are accepting this responsibility. If we are to fulfill our duty, we’re going to need a new vision of the future.

I think it’s time for us to start visualizing the future we desire. I’m not pretending it will be easy to get there.

I believe we have three tall mountains to climb.

Conservation is, indeed, the first - if smallest - mountain. We need to forestall the effects of global warming as much as possible while we get our act together. We’re on the lower slopes of the first mountain.

The next climb is longer and steeper. Population control is perfectly unavoidable. Eventually, we must control human population or we’ll make a mess of the habitat and then nature will exert the control we abdicated. I’m not advocating anything draconian, but if the international moral consensus were that each human being should reproduce himself or herself once – two children per couple – populations would begin slowly shrinking. It’s a simplistic solution, but the ultimate solutions are often the simplest.

After conservation, population is the second mountain we have to climb and we’ll have to negotiate some very difficult routes through social and political conflict to reach the top.

I’m optimistic that we’ll reach both these goals. We already have the tools we need to reduce per-capital consumption, and to control our population. That leaves the third, and tallest, mountain.

As our economies are now structured, we depend on population growth to support economic growth. If demand for all goods and services were shrinking, values of all goods and services would also be declining in our current models. Imagine a world in which demand for all the fundamental human necessities – food, shelter, etc. – were shrinking every year. Imagine a world in which, let’s say, 5 percent of all houses on the market had no buyers because fewer people lived in your city. We’ve never seen this and we probably don’t have the means of creating prosperity in a shrinking population. To sustain our population at lower, healthier levels, we’ll have to invent a human economy that creates prosperity without growth. We will need brand new economic tools.

If we are to form the global consensus we will need to support these sea-changes in human attitudes and culture, then we’ll have to visualize – as individuals and as a species – successful outcomes for all concerned. Otherwise, a lot of people just won’t share in the consensus and we won’t be successful. We need new systems in which no one is placed at an unfair disadvantage. I’m not talking about socialism, communism or any other obsolete social system. I think we’re looking for something new that rewards human innovation without requiring human expansion. Simply put, our new economic systems will require unprecedented cooperation across cultural, class and political barriers.

I think we have the tools to halt climate change and reduce the human population. But the economic tools we’ll need to secure our societies during a population reduction have yet to be invented.

Can we create economic tools that distribute the benefits of a healthy planet to all the planet’s human residents? Maybe not, but we’ll need to come pretty close to that if we’re to convince our global neighbors to join us in our effort to create a sustainable, healthy habitat for ourselves.

If we are to cooperate, as a species, in forming a positive vision for our future then the disenfranchised must be enfranchised. It’s a global problem whose solution must be a global consensus, or something very close to it.

If all the residents of North America and Western Europe cut their per-capita energy consumption in half over the next 20 years (not likely) and the rest of the world held per-capita consumption steady at their current, frugal levels (also not likely), total energy consumption will remain the same. A 50-percent reduction in the developed world will not be sufficient to outweigh population increases in the developing world, even if the increasingly affluent residents of developing countries don’t increase their energy consumption.

Someone’s going to object to my evidence. Maybe it will take 75 years to reach 10 billion population. Maybe the planet can accommodate 12 billion frugal human beings. The rate of population growth is not the issue. Any growth at all creates the same ultimate dilemma. Sure, we might figure out ways of accommodating 10 or 15 or 20 billion people in a crowded world. But why would we want to?

If ultimately we must control our population, why not plan for a rich, healthy planet?

What if we decided, by mutual consensus, that a stable worldwide population of 4 billion people is our goal? Could we then live on a planet with clean air and water, plenty of food for everyone and the environmental resilience necessary for us to prosper through the inevitable environmental fluctuations – the next ice age, for instance? Could we restore habitats now teetering on the brink of destruction?

Couldn’t we create a sustainable healthy planet just because we decided to?

In one sense it’s a terrific time to be human. We’re here to meet our biggest challenge so far – bigger than bipedal locomotion; bigger than the domestication of plants and animals; bigger than the invention of the wheel. We’re here to confront our own biology, the essential nature that tells us to keep reproducing and expanding. If you could view the entirety of human experience from the dawn of our evolution to the present, if you could pick the human century you’d like to witness first-hand, you might choose this one. I think I would. I would want to watch us tackle this problem.

The suffering, if we don’t get it right, will not be humanity’s alone. Already we’ve destroyed thousands of species. In just the last few years Africa’s Western Black Rhinoceros, Europe’s Pyrenean Ibex, Costa Rica’s Golden Toad and North America’s Pearly Mussel have, so far as we can tell, passed into oblivion as humanity has destroyed their habitats. The scientists of the World Conservation Union estimate that 99 percent of recent extinctions and currently threatened species have been or will be destroyed by human activities. Conservation International reports that, as of the middle of 2008, a plant or animal species was becoming extinct every 20 minutes.

Extinction is normal, of course. The vast majority of species that ever lived seem to have disappeared somewhere along the line. What’s not normal is the rate of extinction. The rate of extinctions has been accelerating since the beginning of the 20^th century and we’re responsible.

It’s no great tragedy that any particular species becomes extinct, unless of course it’s us. Generally, it has been part of nature’s way and each extinction opens opportunities for other species.

The greater tragedy is the fact that we’re taking a healthy, resilient and rich natural habitat – the only planet we know where life thrives – and degrading its ability to support life. New species can’t evolve fast enough to replace the diversity we’re destroying, even if we hadn’t made the habitat inhospitable. We’ve inherited the best planet in the known universe, only to squander it. And if we don’t change course soon, the planet could very well end up unfit for human habitation or at the very least damned uncomfortable.

Yesterday, Al Gore gave a speech challenging the United States to set a surprising new goal: To produce 100-percent of our electricity from renewable and carbon-free sources within 10 years.

Here’s the text of the speech, and you can check out video highlights below. It’s already gotten a lot of attention, and there’s a nice roundup of reactions to the speech from the blog Gristmill.

Tell us what you think. Is this goal far too ambitious, or is it achievable? Is setting this kind of challenge just the thing we need to start thinking seriously about renewable energy, or should we be aiming for more realistic goals?

More on this Topic:

An Inconvenient Truth

What You Can Do To Help Solve the Climate Crisis

Now is the moment when our uniquely objective perspective and our enterprising intellect are engaged in what may be the most important challenge faced by our species so far.

Other species have damaged their habitats or lost them to environmental disaster. The dinosaurs, the Saber-toothed Tiger and the Woolly Mammoth died out. Many species routinely go through periods of catastrophic population collapse and reestablished themselves in some new biological equilibrium. Lemmings spring to mind. But none of them, so far as we know, are consciously aware of the natural forces at work. They couldn’t conceptualize the fact that their own reproduction, their natural consumption and expansion, played a part in causing the pain of their population’s collapse.

Nature has lots of tools at her disposal for controlling species that cause habitat damage. Famine and disease are her most potent weapons, effective and unpleasant.

We, on the other hand, can conceptualize our effect on the environment and we might, if we wish to, avoid the suffering Nature will inflict.

And we could restore the astonishing garden into which we were born – the Earth.

I can’t think of a more inspirational goal.

 
In July of 2007 I nearly killed myself. I didn’t do it intentionally, but I almost died from a terminal case of poor visualization.

That’s right, poor visualization almost ended my life.

The motorcycle is a beautiful machine. In motion it is graceful, yet it defies the physical senses. When a motorcycle carves through a corner it solves a ridiculously complex equation involving speed, the rider, the road, the tires and a thousand other elements that allow the motorcyclist and motorcycle to lean into the corner at an angle that appears — in video or photographs — perfectly impossible. Until the rider gets used to it, it doesn’t feel any more plausible than it looks.

The decreasing-circumference curve is the bane of the inexperienced rider. In the mountains, curves are not always symmetrical. If you enter a turn with a gentle arc and that arc gradually becomes smaller, then you are in a decreasing-circumference curve. This presents a serious problem when you enter the corner too fast and then discover it closing down on you. It’s your classic rookie error, and I made it.

There’s only one way out and slowing down is not an option. To brake a motorcycle in a high-speed corner is disastrous. You’ll lose traction and lay the machine down on its side. So the experienced rider leans deeper into the irrational angle and holds his intent. He visualizes a successful outcome. He experiences the exhilaration of successfully testing his own courage and skill against the laws of nature.

I, on the other hand, lost my nerve. Rather than visualizing myself – and the motorcycle – carving our way out of our predicament I became trapped in a tentative state of mind in the middle of the turn. I let fear take over. Even though I was following two other riders who had successfully negotiated the corner, even though logic dictated that I could follow those other riders, I lost my confidence. I just couldn’t see myself completing that turn at that speed. I couldn’t visualize it and, for lack of a clear mental picture, I became trapped in the curve. Instinctively, I tried to slow the motorcycle down. In an automobile that would have been precisely the right answer. On the motorcycle it was a bad decision and could have been disastrous. The motorcycle and I went sideways, bounced off a fortuitous guardrail and I went down in the middle of the road at about 45 miles per hour.

I walked away after ruining a good helmet and about $1,000 worth of excellent protective clothing. Well, “walked” might be inaccurate. I hobbled away. It was about a year before I healed up completely.

Naturally I did a lot of reflecting about how the accident could have been avoided.

The most obvious answer to that question is, of course, “Don’t ride motorcycles.” My wife and a number of friends have brought this simple solution to my attention repeatedly. Duly noted.

But as I considered the lessons I took from the experience – while massaging the deep bruises on my legs, arms and torso – it dawned on me that our species is, in a manner of speaking, right in the middle of a decreasing-circumference curve. Global climate change has created a worldwide sense that if we don’t do something soon we may have messed up our environment for the long term. We’re moving fast toward some form of environmental reckoning.  The path we are on necessitates a change in attitude.

At the moment we have our attention trained on conservation, effectively the middle of the curve. Instinctively, we want to slow down our personal consumption.

A wreck is imminent if we just follow our instincts.  Voices around the globe are calling for us to, “Slow down!” But we’re in the middle of a bunch of phenomena we don’t know how to interrupt. We are focusing our attentions in the wrong place. Motorcyclists, mountain-bikers, skiers and steeplechasers all learn the same lesson: When you have a lot of forward momentum you have to train your attention beyond the short-term challenges. You need to be thinking ahead. You need to form a picture of yourself successfully negotiating the coming obstacles. You have to visualize the successful outcome. Your reflexes and, hopefully, some previous visualization are taking care of the ruts under the tires of your bicycle. Your attention should be trained on the area where you will arrive in the next few seconds. Your mind visualizes the best route and your body begins making adjustments in your approach.

If you focus on the intermediate obstacle, you’re likely to hit that obstacle.

It’s recently occurred to me that I don’t hear anyone describing the world in which we want to live 20 years from now. Almost no one, it seems, is visualizing the successful outcome. We’re too busy arguing about where to drill for oil.

As far as we know, there is only one species in the universe capable of conceptualizing its own impact on its habitat. That’s us.

If we are defined by our capacity for objective thought, then we are now living in one of the definitive moments in human history. Our ability to conceptualize our own role in nature defines us as human beings. Our capacity for creating solutions to complex problems is the primary factor in our success as a species. In the Judeo-Christian Bible we defined ourselves as human beings when we ate the fruit of the “Tree of Knowledge” and spontaneously realized we were naked. In a phrase, we became self-aware.

Today we have to face the challenge of solving the definitive human riddle. We are aware that we have an impact on the environment. We are aware that our population has been growing exponentially. We are aware that no species can expand infinitely on this finite planet. With this awareness comes responsibility. We are capable of moderating our impact on the planet. We are capable of conceptualizing a sustainable human habitat and executing a plan to create that habitat. Yes, we face complex problems. But we’ve solved complex problems before. Perhaps the more vexing puzzle is how to defeat our biological programming — the programming that, in the words of the Judeo-Christian Bible, tells us to “go forth and multiply.”

It’s a good thing we enjoy solving puzzles.

If you're concerned about climate change, and want to reduce carbon emissions, you might be surprised how easy it is to figure out how much carbon dioxide is produced by, say, driving to work. Sure, there are a lot of carbon calculators out there where you can plug in all the numbers on how much you drive, and how much electricity you use. But it's also surprisingly easy to estimate yourself.

Here’s how you can do it. If you go to the EPA carbon calculator it gives you recognizable units, like gallons and pounds. (And slightly more confusing units like carbon dioxide equivalent.  Essentially, they’re adding the other greenhouse gases into the number for carbon dioxide. But there’s more about that on the calculator page.)

It’s very simple to use, so here are results I got from spending a few minutes with the EPA calculator and playing with the numbers.

* Every gallon of gas burned produces about 22 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent. (So for simplicity, let's round down to 20.)
* Every therm of natural gas burned produces about 11 pounds. (I think it’s fair to round down to 10.)
* Every kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity produces about 1.7 pounds.
(If rounding up to 2 seems too painful, consider where your electricity comes from. If it comes from coal, yep, round up to 2. For natural gas, you can figure 1 pound. There are some statistics that help justify those numbers here.)

So when you fill up your gas tank, you have a number in gallons. Take it times 20 and you're awfully close to knowing how much carbon dioxide burning that tank of gas will produce. Same thing goes for your electric bill. Take a look at the number of kilowatt hours. Double it (in most cases) and you’re looking at pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.

Want to think more about pounds of carbon emissions and how to lose them? Here are a few related articles:

Eight Projects for Instant Energy Savings, Mother Earth News 

On Carbon Calculators, Grist 

What Makes a Pound of Carbon Dioxide, The Green Guide

It's time to think about New Year's resolutions again. This year, why not resolve to go on an energy diet? The idea is to set a few measurable goals to make your home more energy efficient in 2008 and then keep track of your progress. Not only will you save money by reducing your energy bills, you'll be protecting the environment by reducing carbon emissions and other pollutants that come from burning fossil fuels.

How can you get started? Here are two books and two Web sites that will help you measure and then reduce your home energy use.

Web Resources. One good place to start is the Climate Crisis Web site, where you can calculate your carbon footprint, and then find lots of suggestions for how to start reducing it.

Another resource I find very useful is The Half Plan section of BuilditSolar.com. The great thing about this site is that it shows you the exact steps one household followed to cut its energy use in half, and tells you exactly how much money and energy they saved by doing each project. 

Helpful Books. Both of the books below are on my own bookshelf, and both are packed with good ideas for saving energy. You may be able to find them at your local library, or click on the links below for sources where you can purchase them.

Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to lose 5,000 Pounds, by David Gershon The Home Energy Diet: How to Save Money by Making Your House Energy Smart, by Paul Scheckel

Are you finding new ways to save energy at home? You can share your experiences in the comments section below.