The Fremont Union High School District is a great example of how the transition to renewable energy is practical, creates jobs, reduces dependence on foreign oil, and benefits the environment. The Fremont Union High School District has installed solar canopies over parking lots, creating a comfortable parking area and producing megawatts of power.  The District used bond funds to install solar photovoltaic power systems at all 5 high schools.  This system saves over $1,000,000 per year, and this translates into jobs going forward on top of the jobs created when the District constructed the systems.

Lynbrook High School, Cupertino, California.

Many school districts around the San Francisco Bay Area have Solar systems and more are installing them.  The amount of power produced is modest, but it is common to be able to reduce the PG&E bill by 80%.  The effects of reducing the energy cost on operating costs are significant, and especially so in this time of limited tax revenue due to the decline in the real estate value. These moves mean that the Schools get to keep several jobs at each school with a solar system operating, and that is a long term direct investment in our communities.

For me, the small subsidy to encourage installation of these systems and the additional utility cost to handle the  unique challenges caused by adding so much solar to the system are one of the things that government can legitimately do with our tax money to ensure that the society benefits, and that investment continues to be made in converting our energy economy to renewable sources.

When you see just how simple these systems are, and consider that as we build more, we can expect costs to come down even further.  If energy produced by fossil fuel sources could be taxed according to the ecological and climatic burden that it creates, the cost equation would immediately favor renewable sources.

There are some climate change deniers who say that responding to climate change now will cost jobs, will hurt the economy. I say that to wait and do nothing is to make certain that the economy will suffer, and to act now as the Fremont Union High School District has done is smart, helps the economy and strengthens the community.

In several school districts that I've seen lately, there was one influential person who's leadership brought the program to life.  As the benefits become more widely understood, I expect that we will see many more systems installed.  Our government should learn from this example and find ways to use policy to encourage a rapid shift from fossil fuel energy to renewable energy.

 

It's time to get serious!

This preprint by Hansen & Sato is an important read. If you want to skip the technical stuff, just read the last page, then go back to the introduction. Actually it is worth reading all the way through without stopping to figure out the technical details just to see how these guys handle the science...

Paleoclimate implications for Human Made Climate Change

I believe that god speaks to us in many ways, and that we are have some profound choices to make as people, as a civilization and this guy is looking around and says "pay attention", what choices we make now may affect not only the billions now living, but also how countless generations to follow will fare on this planet. It is a gift to have the consciousness to see things, it is a question as to if we can act. It is as if an asteroid has been spotted that is going to hit dead center, and we have to decide what to do.

The Cruise ship approach suggests that hedonism, short term greed, and other similar strategies are the most likely response. What is unique here, is the we have a choice, we have the observations, we have juste enough scientific knowledge, and we have just enough capital and time to do something to make a gift to those who follow of a planet that is so beautiful, so able to support life and civilization.
The path to a future with a planet like we know it requires some fortitude, some sacrifice and some real imagination. The biblical story of the garden of Eden can be read in a larger context today.....as our American Indian people say "all life is sacred".

Life will go on no matter what, the more immediate question is what about our civilization? The challenges that Dr. Hansen casually mentions like the loss of the great sea level cities of the world due to sea level rise after next century are also things so large, that if they are far enough out, folks can just party a bit longer, and someone else can adapt "then". Are we smart enough as a civilization to change while we can?

The emergence of the internet is an amazing way of applying billions of minds to a problem, and it changes everything. We see an understanding emerging that is shared by billions of minds. Will this be a force that helps us to respond in a "smart" and caring way across the globe? I see some encouraging signs that is may occur, and at the same time, attempts by governments and corporations and individuals to control this web to prevent a consensus from emerging. I vote for an emerging consensus based on the power of the spirit, the power of the imagination, the power of collective intelligence united by the web.

I tell young folks who wonder which engineering area to study that being a civil engineer is the biggest growth area, followed by energy engineers. Quite interesting to see how the economics of solar have come around even without much improvement in the basic systems over 20 years, just improvements in the manufacturing processes. Solar is now made at a price competitive with fossil fuel energy although it is not sold at that price yet. And solar is only a small part of the answer to the energy question. So we've been given the means and the knowledge of how to adjust, the only question is will we do what is necessary to adapt to the new situation in time?

We now don't count the environmental cost of our energy sources, "externalizing" those costs. This produces a distortion that until now has been working out just fine for the folks selling this approach. Until the environment gets so bad that further degradation hurts us all, this approach has "legs". The approach advocated by Hansen (and for that matter by Tom Freidman of the NYT) is to start incorporating the environmental cost into the energy price, while taking compassionate steps to ease the shift that will occur as folks see the real total cost of our power systems. We have plenty of renewable power on earth for civilization, but we will have to consciously shift to a sustainable energy economy if our civilization is to continue. If we do so now, it is possible that we can live well, we can ease poverty and the human suffering, and continue to flourish as a civilization for thousands of years.

The explosive growth of the Chinese driving class has forever changed the oil price ups and downs, so time is quite short for us to figure out what we are going to do.....(no blame for the Chinese have as much right to develop as anyone, it's just a matter of this time in history that I'm discussing)

Once we see food prices rise as the artificial energy costs and water shortages start to hit, once the desertification of large zones of arable land occur, these changes are largely irreversible on a timescale that is relevant to our society.

Those changes will drive a shift in the political situation that could see populations want to move at a scale never seen in modern times, conflict for resources driven by desperation, border conflicts that make the stuff we see in Arizona look like childsplay, and disease challenges beyond anything we know today. By that time, the capital that we now have, capital that could be applied to create the new energy economy and stabilize the climate, will be scarce or gone and the only way that the situation stabilizes is with a much smaller population in a world without many of the fellow beings, the organisms that make up the web of life that is the wonder that I experience each morning.

How do we answer the question from god "what have you done with the paradise that I gave you?".

Morning is one of my favorite times.

Quietly I get up, as Sharon is sleeping still,

and find my self walking in the dark with two cats

toward the kitchen.

Marinations 16 Jayne MacPherson - Shiny Objects

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Marinations introduces the work of two Northern California poets, Jayne McPherson and (host) Sharon Skolnick-Bagnoli. McPherson interweaves intense personal recollection with a highly-charged physical metaphor, exploring the psyche in the rolling landscapes of healing. Skolnick-Bagnoli invites us into the making of her anthology, Shiny Objects, a distillation of 30+ years of poetic and visual art that touches on socio/politics, the souls journey through space-time, and the many ways we reach for things that shine.

Tags: marinations, poetry, art, giantsparade, cmcm, cable 26, marin, shinyobjects, healing

Marinations Program 15

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Visiting with designer-writer Sharon Skolnick-Bagnoli in this episode of Marinations, visual artist Bert Arenson describes the mysterious ways in which he manifests a painting. Then Julie Motz, explorer in the twin arenas of human psychology and wellness, shares glimpses of her journey and her penetrating work in healing.

Marinations is a nutritious stew of nature, culture and ideas.  Produced in Marin County California, the show airs on San Rafael's Community Media of Marin channel 26 on the second Thusday and fourth Thursday of the month at 7:30pm and is webcast live at that time.  We interview artist, writers, scientists, documentarians, dancers, teachers, journalists, musicians and other creative people. 

Tags: art, healing, marinations, bret arenson, julie motz, sharon skolnick-bagnoli, community media, cmcm, marin, wellness, dance