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Ancient wisdom on sustainability

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Today’s guest post comes from Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, Md.

Fred is my rabbi, and he’s a great guy; he was “green” before green was cool. In 19990, during his  junior year at Brandeis, Fred set off on a 3,300-mile walk from Los Angeles to New York as part of a project called the Global Walk for a Livable World. Today, he serves on the national boards of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) and as Chair of Greater Washington Interfaith Power & Light. Fred believes, as I do, that clergy of all faiths can and should play a greater role when it comes to teaching people about the environment, and the impact of their consumption.

This is a letter that Fred wrote last spring in the Adat Shalom newsletter under the headline “You Can’t Take It With You”:

Recently, while wrapping up the Book of Leviticus, we read Parashat Behar. This Torah portion is basically one chapter, Lev. 25 — and it’s at the very top of my list of favorite biblical passages. Behar outlines the every-seven-year Sabbatical (Shmita) during which the fields lie fallow, and the every-fiftieth-year Jubilee (Yovel) when debts are forgiven, slaves are freed, and land is returned to its original owner. It’s the Jewish source for the notion that “you can’t take it with you”.

Leaving aside the scholarly debate over how thoroughly these teachings were practiced and enforced during Temple times, as a values statement there are many vital messages for us today in this teaching, from the political to the personal. Four short examples:

Economic: What a great balancing act the Yovel/Jubilee is, between unrealistic communism and unbridled capitalism! The Torah is way ahead of modern society in suggesting a middle way — a way that preserves people’s personal incentive to work hard and get ahead (and thus advance society as a whole), while recognizing that imbalances accrue across the generations and becoming self-replicating after a time. Be capitalist for a whole generation, but every fifty years level the playing  field. The implications of this value system for our household economics are enormous, since Judaism teaches that you can’t take it with you — and oughtn’t leave it all for the few lucky enough to be
your heirs, either. [MG: This suggests that the authors of the Torah would agree with former Treausury Secy. Robert Rubin, union leader Richard Trumka, hedge fund guru Julian Robertson and heiress Abigail Disney that we should restore the estate tax.)

Ecological: In our chapter we are commanded: “you shall not sell the land beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are strangers and sojourners with Me.” This is the consciousness that the world so desperately needs now — the land is not ours, and our land use decisions need to take a Higher Power into account.

Plus a bonus:  Would you believe a plug for sustainable agriculture, as in letting your  fields lie fallow every so often to re-fix nitrogen into the soil and to prevent erosion? It’s right there in the Torah! You can’t take it with you — but you can leave a lot of damage behind you if you’re not careful.

Energetic: As the land needs a rest every seventh year, so does the farmer, plantation owner and migrant fruit-picker alike, the Torah goes out of its way to remind us. And so do we. Why has ‘sabbatical’ been retained only in academia and religion, when everyone needs and deserves a chance to step back from their day-to-day work, and to recharge their batteries?
Shabbaton/sabbatical is a value for us all. You can’t take it with you – but while you’re here you can refocus periodically on what really matters, and recharge so that you do it better going forward.

Emotional/spiritual: As in macro-economics, so in the inner realm — the Jubilee reminds us that the goal of life is not to accrue ‘stuff’ and stocks and savings, but wisdom and friendship and meaning. I had occasion to offer a eulogy during the week of parashat Behar for a lawyer who happened to work on estate issues, but more importantly was a beloved dad and grandfather, husband and friend. And this was the upshot: you can’t take it with you. Important as his work was, the Torah reminds us that all of life is one big estate-planning exercise. All ‘things’ depreciate; it’s only a matter of time before we give it all back, one way or another. But a life well-lived is of enduring value, and the love and goodwill generated in that lifetime does in fact continue beyond our numbered days.

You can’t take it with you — but you can leave a legacy of love.

The decision is ours to make, with every priority we set and every bit of time we allocate. Remember, every minute of every day — we don’t take it with us, but we do make a difference.

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Posted in Climate Change, Consumption, Environment, Food, Religion, Sustainability | No Comments »

Clean batteries, dirty coal: your tax dollars at work

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

How would you like to invest in a start-up that makes advance renewable energy storage systems?  Before investing, you should know that this particular company has:

  • -Never made a profit.
  • -Piled up  losses of $44 million since going public in 2007.
  • -Replaced its CEO because he was paid both as an employee and independent contractor.
  • -Seen its stock tumble from $6 to 70 cents a share since going public in 2007

President Obama at ZBB EnergyActually, you’ve already invested. The company is called ZBB Energy, and it’s seeking to commercial zinc-bromide technology developed in Australia back in the 1980s. This week,  President Obama visited its U.S. headquarters in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. According to the White House:

ZBB Energy Corporation is using $1.3 million in Recovery Act State Energy Program loans to fund a $4.5 million factory renovation to triple their capacity to manufacture flow batteries and power systems.  As a result, the company has already retained a dozen workers and will hire about 80 new workers over time.

“Companies like this,” the president said, “are showing us how manufacturing can come back right here in the United States of America, right back here to Wisconsin.”

Well, maybe–but the company will have to find some customers and generate some profits for its  comeback to be meaningful. The $1.3 million may sound like pocket change, and it is, but ZBB also has secured a $14.68 million Recovery Act 48c Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit to build a new factory. It’s one of 183 projects in 43 states to get $2.3 billion in Recovery Act tax credits for clean energy manufacturing projects. The Wall Street Journal editorialized about ZBB today under the headline Uncle Sam, Venture Capitalist.

Meanwhile, another energy-related business in Wisconsin is enjoying an Obama administration subsidy–and this time, the controversy is being generated by the left. Bucyrus, which is based in South Milwaukee, manufactures mining equipment. Unlike ZBB, it doesn’t need government help to survive; the company’s equipment helped excavate the Panama Canal and it generated $2.6 billion in revenue and $312 million in net income last year.

The controversery has arisen because the Export-Import Bank of the United States is moving forward with a $600-million loan guarantee to support the sale and export of Bucyrus mining equipment to a company called Sasan Power Ltd., for a 3,960 megawatt (meaning very big) coal-fired power plant in Madhya Pradesh, India. You read that right–while it’s becoming increasing difficult, thank goodness, to build new, polluting coal plants in the U.S., your government is supporting the construction of a coal plant in India. It agreed to go forward when the project’s backer, Reliance Power, agreed to develop a 250 megawatt renewable energy facility as well.  The Ex-Im Bank, as it’s known, is also considering backing a 4,800 megawatt coal-fired plant in South Africa.

The rationale for the government loan guarantee is, of course, jobs. In a news release, Bucyrus CEO Tim Sullivan praised Wisconsin’s governor, senators and congresspeople for helping to persuade the Ex-Im bank–which initially turned down the loan for environmental reasons–to reverse itself. “The nearly 1,000 U.S. jobs supported by the project include over 300 family-supporting jobs in the Milwaukee region and approximately 650 additional U.S. jobs in Bucyrus’ supply chain,” the company said.

But jobs at what price? Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club and a group called Pacific Environment all oppose the loan because of the new plant will be one of the largest sources of global warming pollutants on earth. Doug Norlen of Pacific Environment said:

The Ex-Im Bank’s ongoing fossil fuel binge indicates a clear unwillingness of the agency to adhere to Congressional climate change directives and systemic bias towards financing fossil fuel projects.

Writing at Huffington Post, Michelle Chan of Friends of the Earth says:

What’s particularly worrying is the precedent that this investment will create. The Sasan deal was the first major test of Exim’s new carbon policy (which resulted from a 2002 lawsuit that Friends of the Earth filed in response to the agency’s failure to consider the greenhouse gas implications of its financing activities). Although the policy is not nearly as robust as Friends of the Earth would have hoped, it does empower the Exim Board to reject applications at an early stage because of their carbon emissions. The fact that congressional and White House pressure caused Exim to reverse course on a decision made under this new policy does not bode well for the other four big coal deals in the Exim pipeline, including the 4,800 megawatt Kusile coal power project in South Africa, which would emit 30.5 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Needless to say, ZBB Energy will have to make a whole lot of clean energy storage devices to offset the emissions of big coal plants in India and South Africa, which, to be fair, will probably deliver electricity to lots of people who need it.

What’s most worrisome here is the big picture: The Obama administration, which already owns big chunks of GM, Chrysler and Wall Street, is during a time of record budget deficits intervening in ever-more specific ways in the economy. This is industrial policy at its worst, picking winners and losers, usually in the name of jobs, whether green or in the case of Bucyrus, coal-black. Funny thing, but these loans and grants also have a way of flowing towards politically-connected projects in swing states.

This isn’t to say that the government should keep its hands off the energy business. That’s a pipe dream, pun intended. But if the administration invested lots more in basic energy research and higher education, enacted a stiff  revenue-neutral carbon tax and used the proceeds to reduce payroll taxes, its chances of creating sustainable jobs would be a lot greater. There’d be fewer ribbon-cuttings, for sure, but more prosperity and less waste.

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Posted in Climate Change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Politics, Sustainability | 3 Comments »

Will rooftop solar go mainstream?

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

It’s been a remarkable summer for SunRun, the San Francisco-based startup that’s trying to get solar power onto millions of residential rooftops. SunRun raised $100 million in project financing from utility PG&E. Venture capitalists invested another $55 million in the company. Home Depot agreed to distribute its rooftop solar panels, and Toll Brothers, the big home builder, is using SunRun’s solar leasing program to install PV panels on new homes in a luxury golf-course community in Yorba Linda, CA.

Today, SunRun enters Pennsylvania, its sixth state. You wouldn’t think of Pennsylvania as a solar-friendly state but, as it happens, the Keystone State has all the right ingredients–high and rising electricity prices, generous state subsidies for renewable energy, and a regulatory framework that permits homeowners to sell surplus power back to the electricity grid.

Says Lynn Jurich, the president and co-founder of SunRun: “We want to go to markets where we can save customers money, and where we can make money.”

I’ve written about SunRun before (See SunRun: A New Deal for Solar and Solar’s Strange Bedfellows) but the company is growing so fast, albeit off a small base, that it makes a lot of news. The PG&E, Home Depot and Toll Brothers agreements, along with its geographic expansion, all seem to  further validate the company’s business model. (more…)

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Posted in Climate Change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Small Business, Sustainability | 2 Comments »

Mark Hurd got off easy

Monday, August 9th, 2010

Some notable and quotable items from the news:

Mark Hurd got off easy: Yes, by all accounts, he was a great CEO of Hewlett Packard and no, he may not have engaged in sexual harassment, but let’s focus for a moment on what he did.

The WSJ reported today that “the woman [HP contractor Jodie Fisher] was paid at times when there was no legitimate purpose.” In plain English, this means that he sent money to her that belongs to HP shareholders for work that she did not do. If true, this is clearly a firing offense. If it’s not fraud, then what is it?

The HP board, it seems to me, should have fired Hurd for cause and taken away his severance, which is being valued at about $35 million by The Journal.

As my friend Nell Minow, the corporate-governance expert and founder of The Corporate Library, tweeted the other day, linking to a column by Henry Blodget:

Wait A Minute — Why Does Mark Hurd Get $50 Million Severance When He Lied In His Expense Reports? http://bit.ly/aUSYA6 10:58 PM Aug 6th via TweetMeme

See Nell’s blog here.

As for those who say Hurd will be hard to replace, well, if that’s indeed the case, that’s his fault. A key job of any CEO is to groom potential successors, and assemble a team that can keep a company running smoothly in his or her absence. It’s never a one-man show, and shouldn’t be. One measure of just how well Hurd led HP will be the company’s performance in the next couple of years.

A climate “Pearl Harbor”: Congress’s reluctance or inability to act to curb global warming has led some people, notably Joe Romm, to speculate about what it might take to spur action. Back in 2008, Romm listed a number of “climatic mini-catastrophes” that might move public and policymaker opinion, among them the Arctic going ice-free, a mega-drought hitting the American southwest, more super storms like Katrina and “a heatwave as bad as Europe’s 2003.” I don’t know how the current Russian heat wave compares to the 2003 heat. But shouldn’t it be a wake-up call, if not a Pearl Harbor, when it comes to global warming?

For a detailed meteorological analysis, see Dr. Rob Carver’s blog at Weather Underground. Russian officials now say the heatwave has cost 5,000 lives as fires range out of control, says the Telegraph. Russia banned grain exports last week, with uncertain effects on world food prices. “Russian grain exports totaled 21.4 million metric tons last year, about 17 percent of the global grain trade,” The Times reported. What’s more, according to The Times’ Green blog, Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, blamed the crisis on climate change and called for action:

What’s happening with the planet’s climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us, meaning all heads of state, all heads of social organizations, in order to take a more energetic approach to countering the global changes to the climate.

Unhappily, a crisis in Russia is highly unlikely to rouse the U.S. Senate to action. But imagine if this heat and drought were affecting wheat farmers in, say, Kansas and North Dakota?

Actually, even that might not have an impact. A poll released last week by the Shelton Group found that most people who doubt that climate change is occurring, and caused by man-made activity, would not change their mind even if reality of man-made global warming consumers would not change even if the polar ice cap melted, kids couldn’t go outside to play or shifting weather patterns turned Nebraska into a desert. My goodness.

But the good news is…that while Congress is stalled on the energy and climate front, and while consumers seem less engaged, companies are increasingly finding that sustainability is good for business. As my friend and colleague Joel Makower reports at GreenBiz.com:

The footwear and apparel industry has joined forces to create an Eco Index tool to better understand materials’ and products’ impacts….Meanwhile, appliance makers agreed last week to new energy and water efficiency standards for major appliances that will reduce the nation’s utility bills by billions of dollars. A new bartering exchange was launched to help small businesses with excess supply of goods or services barter for things they need. And John Finisdore writes of an effort by more than 200 companies to understand and manage their dependence and impact on ecosystem services.

I wrote about the outdoors industry initiative (See How ‘green’ are those hiking boots?) last week. You can read more about Timberland’s effort to develop standards for its products here.

Speaking of Greenbiz, later this month I will be leading an online conversation with John D. Gagel, Sustainability Manager at Lexmark International, and Daniel Schmid, Head of Sustainability Operations at SAP, about how sustainability initiatives can drive profitability.  We’ll hear stories from Lexmark and SAP about tools and techniques for monitoring, measuring and reporting on corporate sustainability performance with an aim to driving financial returns. Greenbiz will host the free webcast on Tuesday, August 24, and it is likely to fill up fast, so register soon.

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Posted in Business Ethics, CSR, Climate Change, Corporate Governance, Environment, Sustainability | 2 Comments »

Gouda cheese, wienerschnitzel and the Amazon

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Consider this thought experiment: Given the importance of the Amazon rainforest to the effort to curb climate change, and the potential value of the thousands of species that live only in the Amazon, and the vastness of the place (See Just how big is the Amazon?), what benefit, if any, can justify destroying a few trees, or a few thousand trees, or even a few thousand square miles of trees? Feeding a hungry family? Providing energy, at a lower cost to a nearby city? Making meat or cheese cheaper in the U.S. or Europe?

These are obviously not theoretical questions. They’re the kinds of questions facing the Brazilian government, and they are relevant to the rest of us because decision we make—about the government leaders we elect or about what to eat for dinner—can have an impact on the Amazon. These are also the kinds of questions that arose frequently during my six-day tour of Brazil last week. The government-organized trip for international reporters focused on the Amazon.

The good news is that the rate of deforestation of the Amazon is decreasing, and dramatically. Six years ago, 27.7 square kilometers of trees were cut down—that’s about 10,700 square miles, an area bigger than the state of Massachusetts. Last year, about 7,000 sq. km. were cut down, and this year the pace is slowing further, satellite photos show.

Americo Ribeiro Tunes, who’s in charge of protecting the forest for IBAMA, Brazil’s equivalent of the EPA, told us: “Brazil is on the verge of a major victory over deforestation.”

Well, maybe, but, along with stepped-up law enforcement, a big reason for the decline in deforestation is the global recession, which drove prices down timber, soy and beef, easing pressures on the Amazon. A strong global economy recovery will likely renew the pressure to destroy forest land to raise cattle or harvest timber, no matter what the laws say.

Besides, there’s plenty of opportunity for legal deforestation of the Amazon. Today, landowners are permitted to cut down up to 20% of their land under Brazil’s Forest Code;  proposed revisions would raise that to 50%. Government-approved plans for industrial development include the controversial Belo Monte Dam, which would be the world’s third largest dame, and the potential expansion of the Urucu Oil Province, which we visited (See Deep in the Amazon, learning to like fossil fuels) also pose a threat. Revenues from Amazon development can be used to promote social and education programs in Brazil, the government says.

This may—may—justify drilling for more oil and gas at Urucu. The Petrobras project has done minimal damage to the rainforest, while providing tax benefits to the region, as well as cleaner energy and cheaper electricity to Manaus, where 2 million people live.

Similar arguments can be made for hydroelectric projects like the Belo Monte Dam, which has been in the works for years. The environmental costs are significant, Reuters reports:

The 6 kilometre-long (3.75 miles) dam will displace 30,000 river dwellers, partially dry up a 100-kilometer (62.5 mile) stretch of the Xingu, and flood a 190-square-mile (500-sq-km) area three times the size of Washington D.C.

And the benefits? According to Amazon Watch, which opposes the project,

The electricity may be exported in large part to eight industrial mining and construction companies: Alcoa, ArcelorMittal, Camargo Corrêa, CSN, Gerdau, Samarco, Vale, and Votorantim.

Without knowing more about what these companies do, how much they pay in taxes and how many people they employ, it’s hard to whether the dam will be worth building. In an interview last week, Brazil’s energy minister, Marcio Zimmerman, said the dam is valuable because it’s a source of carbon-free electricity.

As an outsider, and someone just starting to learn about Brazil, I’m not prepared to offer an opinion about these big infrastructure projects. It turns out, though, that while they attract a lot of controversy–movie director James Cameron of Avatar fame last spring joined a protest against Belo Monte–they aren’t the major cause of deforestation. Cattle ranching is, by far, No. 1:

Which brings us to gouda cheese and weinerschnitzel. The oil and gas from Urucu are necessities, so long as we drive cars and fly in airplanes. Likewise electricity–energy is a driver of economic growth, jobs and wealth. But the soy plantations and cattle ranches? They occupy a great deal of land, employ relatively few people and produce animal feed and meat, much of which is shipped to Europe at the U.S.  Ocean-going ships filled with soy, for example, travel from the Amazon port of Santerem to Amsterdam, to feed Dutch and German cows. Meat’s a luxury–millions of people can, and do, live without it.

Destroying rainforests to make cheese, veal and burgers seems like a bad trade-off. At the very least, it’s another reason to eat less meat–not that we really need one. (Among them: Meat is an inefficient and expensive way of getting calories, it contributes to heart disease and obesity, causes of animal suffering, pollutes waterways, etc.) Now that I’ve seen the Amazon, and come to understand the connection between deforestation, cattle and soy, I’m going to curb my own consumption of meat. It’s easy, and it seems like the very least we can do.

Disclosure: My week-long trip to Brazil, with a focus on the environment in the Amazon, was organized by Apex-Brasil, a government-backed agency that promotes trade and investment. It’s sponsored by Electrobras, Petrobras and Banco do Brasil.

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Posted in Climate Change, Consumption, Energy, Environment, Food, Global Poverty, Sustainability | No Comments »

Just how big is the Amazon?

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

It’s one thing to read about the Amazon, and quite another to see it first-hand, as I did for the first time last week. Even then it’s hard to get your head around the size of the world’s largest rainforest and the world’s largest river.

Yet size is really important when talking about the Amazon.

Size is why the fate of the Amazon matters to everyone: it’s a crucial storehouse for carbon, and the richest repository of  biodiversity in the world. It’s also the reason why “managing” the rainforest is hard, if indeed it can be done at all. (Back in the 1970s, for better or worse, Brazil tried to build a 5,200km road called the Trans Amazonian Highway, but it never finished the job. Too much heat, rain, flooding, etc.) While Brazil has made great strides in stopping illegal deforestation (See Can Brazil Save the Amazon?), protecting what’s left of the forest remains a daunting task.

My government-sponsored trip with a group of international reporters focused on climate and the Amazon. When we met with Izabella Teixeira, Brazil’s environment minister, someone asked her whether the ministry needs more cops on the ground to enforce laws prohibiting deforestation. Of course, she said, smiling, but she was honest enough to add that there’s no way to catch all the violators. Remember, she said, we’re talking about a region of 3.5 million hectares, or  1.6 million square miles, and that’s just the portion of the rainforest inside Brazil. “If you put an army unit there, it would not be enough,” she said.

Size also makes predicting the Amazon’s future very difficult. Just last week, Andrew Revkin of The New York Times, who has reported on the region for more than 20 years, wrote on his blog:

I’m convinced that the system of rivers and forests is durable enough — not to mention expansive enough — to persist, and even thrive, as Brazil and its neighbors develop their economies.

But Lou Gold, a well-informed American blogger in Brazil, sees things very differently, warns that there’s a rush to develop the rainforest with roads, dams, energy projects, and more of the cattle ranches and soy plantations that have destroyed so much of it. A World Bank study called “Assessment of the Risk of Amazon Dieback,” available here, is summarized like this by the Bank Information Center:

The study predicts with more certainty than any other prior study that the legal Amazon (one of the four primary global climate feedback mechanisms) is very close (about 2-3% of total deforestation) to a tipping point of combined events that will lead ultimately to its collapse

Who’s right? I’m not expert enough to offer an opinion. Meanwhile, here are a few words, numbers and pictures from the trip, most chosen to give you a sense of the size of the river and rainforest.

First, a few words: Brazil is the world’s fifth biggest country and almost half the country is covered by the Amazon. One day, we flew for 90 minutes from the city of Manaus to an oil-and-gas outpost in the forest and in between saw nothing but treetops. They looked like a giant carpet of broccoli. Another day, we flew an hour in the opposite direction, from Manaus to Santerem and, again, saw nothing but forest between the two cities.

No bridges cross the Amazon. That’s not because the river is too wide, I was told, although there are places where, during the rainy season, the river grows to more than 120 miles (!) across. It’s because there aren’t enough people living alongside it to create a need for bridges. People travel from place to place by ferryboats like these, bringing hammocks to sleep in because riverboat journeys often take several days.

Ferryboats in Santerem

Now, a few numbers: The Amazonian forest holds 20% of the world’s fresh water. It’s home to about 45,000 species of plants, 1,800 species of butterflies and 2000 species of fish–ten times as many as all of Europe. (One night at dinner in Santerem, we enjoyed the ribs of a big fish called the Tambaqui that eats plants, by swimming among the trees that get covered during the rainy season when rivers rise by as much as 45 feet. A treat not to be missed if you visit Brazil.)

Tambaqui

Some other things that I saw on the trip…

The Negro River, one of several huge tributaries to the Amazon, from our hotel in Manaus:

The Negro River

The Tabajo River, another big tributary, seen from the riverfront in Santerem. Way in the background, you can see a big Cargill dock, used to ship soy to Europe.

The Topajos River

Trees in the Tapajo national forest, part of the Amazon biome:

A church at dusk in Santerem:

Tomorrow, in my last report from Brazil, I’ll explore the question: Is sustainable development possible in the Amazon? Or is it an oxymoron?

Disclosure: My trip was organized by Apex-Brasil, a government backed agency that promotes trade and investment in Brazil, and financed by Petrobras, Eletrobras and Banco do Brasil.

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Posted in Climate Change, Environment, Sustainability | 2 Comments »

Brazil’s climate guy is green but blue

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Sergio Serra

A cell phone rings. It belongs to Sergio B. Serra, Brazil’s ambassador for climate change, a longtime diplomat with a professorial manner. Actually, it doesn’t ring. It croaks. Sounds like something in the rainforest.

“It’s a frog,” Serra says, laughing, during a meeting today with a group of visiting reporters. “Very politically correct.”

Serra is a green. But he’s also blue.

Green? Brazil will commit to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, even as a developing country, in the next round of climate negotiations. Brazil gets nearly half of its energy from renewable sources, mostly hydropower and sugar cane ethanol. Brazil is even winning the battle against deforestation in the Amazon.

That’s green.

Blue? Well, even though Serra is spending virtually all his time promoting a global climate treaty—this weekend, for instance, Brazil is hosting a meeting of the so-called BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) to talk about climate change—he has modest expectations for COP16 in December in Cancun, the next big UN meeting on climate. Nor does he have much hope that a global climate treaty with binding caps on carbon emissions, the kind of deal that will likely be needed to deal with the climate crisis, can be negotiated in the immediate future.

No wonder he’s blue.

The biggest obstacle to a global deal is the U.S. Congress, which has yet to pass a law capping climate pollution in the U.S. and, even if it does, may resist a UN-administered treat. Other counties won’t go forward without a commitment from the U.S., the world’s No. 2 emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China.

The U.S. is pivotal, Serra said: “Just as pivotal as the U.S. thinks China is pivotal.”

Serra, who speaks near-perfect English, spent about 90 minutes chatting with the visiting reporters, and provided an insider’s view of the thorny politics of climate action. He was in the room, representing Brazil, when President Obama personally tried to broker a deal last December in Copenhagen, and he moves easily between the western powers and the poor countries of the global south, no surprise since Brazil is somewhere in between.

Climate is the biggest and most complex collective action problem ever. No action by an individual, a company or even a country to curb its greenhouse gas emissions will solve the climate crisis until most everyone agrees to do so. Each country’s circumstances and history differ, leading to arguments about who is obligated to do what. And the climate crisis creates risks for politicians because the costs of action are short-term and significant, while the benefits are long-term and uncertain.

Unlike some enviros in the U.S., Serra acknowledges the cost issue in a straightforward way.  “There’s a price for being responsible in terms of climate,” he says. “Especially because much of the evolution towards a green economy depends on technology.” Developing countries can’t be expected to foot the bill, he said, because, one, they’re poor and two, they didn’t make the climate mess; the rich countries did.

He explained:

This is the concept of historical responsibility, and it’s not that complicated. The situation we are in regarding global warming is due mostly to the burning of fossil fuels since the beginning of the industrial revolution. So the countries whose industries which industrialized later are much less responsible for global warming.

China is now the world’s No. 1 emitter but “they have much less of a historical responsibility than the U.S.,” he said.

Post-Copenhagen disappointment, if not dismay, led some critics to suggest that the UN process itself, which seeks to reach a global consensus, is to blame. Why not let the world’s 20 biggest countries work on a deal, I asked Serra.

“We will get nowhere if we don’t try to make the negotations as transparent and inclusive as possible,” he replied. He said “consensus is not exactly unanimity” because some countries can express their consensus with their silence. Besides, he said, poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America “that are more vulnerable, that are most affected” are not part of the 20 major economies, and they need to help shape a  global deal.

Serra expressed two hopes for Cancun. First, that an agreement could emerge around REDD (Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation) that would provide financing to developing countries, like Brazil, that protect vital forests. Second, that rich countries could work out details of a $30-billion financing commitment they made at Cancun to help poor countries adapt to climate change and develop new technologies. The financing deal is ridiculously complicated, with disagreements about who should administer the fund, how spending should be monitored and where the money would come from.

As if that weren’t enough, the global economic crisis has left rich countries feeling  less rich, although my travels in Brazil, where you can see people living in conditions that would not be tolerated in the U.S., made clear that even in these tough times, most Americans are very, very well off by global standards.

When our discussion ended, I checked my email and learned that Senate Democrats have given up on a climate bill this summer.

Barring a stunning performance by Democrats in this fall’s midterm elections, that means no climate legislation until 2013, if then.

Now I’m blue.

Disclosure: My six-day trip to Brazil was organized by Apex-Brasil, a government-backed agency that promotes trade and investment, and sponsored by Petrobras, Electrobras and Banco do Brasil.

Posted in Climate Change, Economics, Environment, Global Poverty, Politics, Sustainability | No Comments »

Sustainable livelihoods in the Amazon

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Inside the Tapajos National Forest, where 228 people have joined in a cooperative known as Coomflona, workers display sandals and wallets made of latex from rubber trees, necklaces and earrings made from the seeds of plants and tiny bottles of plant oils:

More important, they talk about how they are harvesting timber from the rainforest with extreme care, strictly limiting the number of trees that are cut, preserving younger specimens and removing the older ones with minimum impact.

These activities and others like them—harvesting acai or Brazil nuts, ecotourism, or developing oils for medicinal or cosmetic use–are absolutely vital to protecting the Amazon because they generate the income needed by the people who live there.

They’re often called sustainable livelihoods, meaning that they are ways to make a living that preserve or restore the environment.

Without them, people would resort to cattle ranching—small-scale agriculture, soy farming or illegal logging—the very activities that already have deforested nearby areas, as shown here:

Yesterday (July 21), I visited  Coomflona with a small group of reporters from the U.S., UK, France and Brazil. Before the visit, we took a charter flight from the small city of Santarem over the Tapajos forest to see the contrast between protected zones and denuded areas. Below is an image of the forest and another of deforestation, taken from the plane:

After the flight, we drove an hour from Santerem to the coop– a potential solution to the problem of deforestation, albeit at a small scale. Coomflona, which began in 2005 with lots of Brazilian government and international support, has organized people from nearby communities to exploit the rainforest in sustainable ways. (more…)

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Can Brazil save the Amazon?

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

This morning I woke up in a hotel in Manaus, Brazil, had breakfast overlooking the Negro River, then went for a run along the river’s beaches. It was an enjoyable way to begin my first visit to Brazil, a six-day, government-backed, jam-packed tour with a focus on the environmental issues facing the Amazon.

Environmentalists have labored for decades to protect the impossibly vast rainforests of the Amazon, which make up more than half of the world’s tropical forests. But until recently they had little to show for their efforts. (Ben & Jerry’s Rainforest Crunch doesn’t count.) Since the 1970s,  about 230,000 square miles of the Amazon have been lost to development, mostly cattle ranches, soy plantations and illegal logging.

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Only lately has the rate of deforestation began to slow, thanks to more progressive government policies and corporate campaigns by NGOS, notably Greenpeace.  Just last week, there was encouraging news from a British think tank called Chatham House, which published a major report on illegal logging around the world. Fiona Harvey wrote in the Financial Times:

Illegal logging has fallen by 22 per cent worldwide in the past decade according to a report published on Thursday …

The assessment found that that in certain key countries the decline was even more dramatic, showing a fall of between 50 and 75 per cent in the Brazilian Amazon, 75 per cent in Indonesia and by about half in Cameroon.

The New York Times said:

In Brazil in particular, an overhaul of logging laws and a new zeal in enforcement have led to a significant drop not only in illegal logging but also in overall deforestation rates in the Amazon, according to satellite data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research.

Why should you care?

The big reason is that deforestation is a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for as much as 20 percent of global emissions, scientists say. Preventing deforestation of the Amazon is incredibly complicated: It requires good government policy, effective local law enforcement, satellite monitoring and global cooperation because soy, beef and logs are shipped from Brazil to the U.S., Japan and Europe. Rich countries, NGOs and even some corporations  have been trying for years to find way to create market mechanisms or outright grants that would get money to places like the Amazon, so that trees  are worth more standing than cut down. (See Your parents were wrong and Marriott waves the REDD flag.)

Even oil and coal companies like this idea because preserving trees is low-cost way to generate carbon offsets and one of the very cheapest ways to fight climate change–much less expensive, say, than building solar or wind power.

Tropical forests are also storehouses of biodiversity that are the source of medicines, food and chemicals used worldwide.

Manaus has been the gateway to the Amazon since the 19th century. You can get here by plane or boat but no roads connect the city, which is home to about  2 million people, to the rest of Brazil. (In that regard, it’s a little like Juneau, Alaska, but hotter.) A half dozen or so reporters are taking this trip; this afternoon we (more…)

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Greening the world’s biggest supply chain

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

The U.S. government is going to ask its suppliers to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. It’s not going to require it. It won’t happen right away. But this is a big deal.

government_uncle_sam_go_greenIt’s a big deal because the government is by far the nation’s largest single buyer of goods and services: It occupies nearly 500,000 buildings, operates more than 600,000 vehicles, employs more than 1.8 million civilians, and purchases more than $500 billion per year in goods and services. The General Services Administration, which is more or less the government’s purchasing department, buys more than 12 million products and services–an astonishing number, when you stop and think about it. And almost 600,000 companies are registered to do business with the government. Yes, 600,000!

In any event, although they won’t be required to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, and although it’s not clear when or how or even if the government will give preference to companies or products with a lower carbon footprint,  you can be sure that many, if not most, of those 600,000 companies will soon think seriously about counting carbon. Once they do, they’ll begin to look at opportunities to curb their energy use–by operating more efficiently, opting for greener offices, promoting tele-community, whatever.

To learn more about how this might work, I spoke by phone with Steve Leeds, who is the Senior Counselor to the Administrator for the U.S. General Services Administration as well as the GSA’s senior sustainability officer. (more…)

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