KEXP Presents Mind Over Matters; Sustainability Segments: K.C. Golden

this is diane warren your host on the sustainability segment of mind over matter is on k x p seattle many plenty of them and online and katie execute out our g our guest this morning is kc golden policy director for climate solutions a washington state based non profit seeking to accelerate practical unprofitable solutions to global warming from nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and two case it was a special assistant to the mayor of seattle for clean energy and climate protection initiatives in that capacity he helped to engineer seattle city lights commitment to become the nation's first climate neutral electric power utility and the city's commitment to exceed the goals of the kyoto protocol kc golden it's here today to give us an update on where we stand in our efforts to fight global warming and how we need to proceed to prevent catastrophic climate change welcome casey thanks in terms of the most recent science how close are we to levels of carbon in the atmosphere that put us at risk for catastrophic climate change were were definitely didn't close to the roads are good stuff only not to really to be accelerating our efforts at solutions the

scientists say that the line that we should really avoid it is increases of two degrees fahrenheit in the global average temperature beyond where we are now and of course they're sort of momentum in the system so the temperatures been building for a while it will continue to build even as we turn ourselves more enthusiastically toward solutions and avoiding that two degree threshold is going to be a big challenge that's the threshold at which scientists say you start to experience negative feedback loops and other things that drive the climate and to sort of uncontrollable catastrophes the good news however is that it's pretty clear that with m aggressive global ambitions full tilt clean energy revolution we can stay on the right side of that two degree model which are having time to lose one of the trends in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide over the past few years well you know with the economic situation are starting to see a little bit of a global slowdown but for the most part they've continued to increase the pace driven primarily

now by the growth of developing economies who were just really starting to see their economies take off an increase in fossil fuel consumption and those economies people live aspiring to and emulating the kind of prosperity that we enjoyed in the us which is a fossil fuel prosperity and that kind of prosperity isn't sustainable anymore for us or for that so the challenge now is to develop new sustainable prosperity that both worked for us and a lot of other people who aspire to what we are looking at the less specifically what have been our transom greenhouse gas emissions compared to the world as a whole they're still up the last year or two have been somewhere in the neighborhood of steady it's always hard in any one year to ned out all the different things that are going on it's clear that we reduce our oil consumption last year when gas prices were i quite significantly by on the order of six percent that is a great one year phenomenon but it was clearly driven by the spiking gas prices and me the interesting thing will be to see now

whether now that gas prices are down whether we forget the lessons and whether we go back to the levels of oil consumption that we were at before or whether we engineer some lasting changes right now in two thousand and eight what fraction of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions are being emitted by the us border and there's some very interesting work being done internationally after the nations of the world are meeting for the annual international climate treaty meeting as we speak here today there in poland on the last meeting under the kyoto protocol next year in copenhagen expect to negotiate a new treaty that world to succeed the kyoto protocol but one of the things that's most hotly debated is what is the responsibility of the developed world the relatively rich world to engineer solutions and your question about what our proportional commission says that's an important part of determining what our responsibility as most of the formulas they're using for determining responsibility and capability to invest and solutions actually put us closer to thirty to thirty five

percent of the total responsibility and capability is in the united states and those two things are a function of not just our emissions today there are historic emissions because all of the missions that we've produced in the last hundred years are still out there and still warming the planet and also a function of our relative wealth relative to the rest of the world that if you take those both into effect roughly a third of the responsibility for investing in an engineering solutions is right here in the us how much time do we have and given the current trends before we face catastrophic climate change if we want to change from what we're meeting today you know our catastrophic i suppose is in the eye of the beholder last fall about this time we had the second hundred year flood we've had in the last five years right here in washington state along with a very intense one storm that took down thousands and thousands of acres of trees in southwest washington flooded i find cut off by five the kinds of increases we've seen on every continent last

forty to fifty years in extreme flooding in weather events are very very pronounced so fire's extreme floods katrina like advance those things are already happening the trend in the arctic ice which is kind of odd for me amr a barometer of what's happening to the whole planet are really taking the scientists by surprise used to be that say you know in their most dire projections that the arctic ice will be gone in twenty or thirty years now it looks like in the summer will be gone within the next five and so a lot of these trends are happening much quicker than the scientists predict it and in a way that's what you would anticipate if you think about how science works when scientists all get together and try to come to a consensus there incentive in our instinct is not to all agree that's not outside to succeed side to succeed by disagreeing and writing papers the challenge different theories the fact that they all agreed on what's going on with the climate system suggest that the debate really is quite over and in fact the physical phenomenon are moving along faster than the scientists were willing to

predict because they're inherently conservative in their collective opinions so we definitely are seen as the problem accelerator growing rate it's already very very costly would you review which human activities are most responsible for driving the increase in greenhouse gas emissions and it is by far is fossil fuel consumption fossil fuel combustion coal oil gas and the other really big important more on is deforestation particularly in the tropical countries the loss of the forest carbon storage in the tropical world also soils to some extent that is stored carbon for millennia is a big driver of global missions for us in the developed world leading a relatively comfortable lifestyle compared to most of the world it's the fossil fuel consumption which means or transportation energy systems it's also consumption in general and how much we consume and how we deal with waste the whole cycle of production of material goods consumption of material goods and disposal of material goods as a lot of emissions associated with that some of them are fossil fuel

emissions he used to produce these good some of them are landfill emissions one we dispose of it is in landfills but one of the big opportunities for reducing our emissions is by consuming less and managing what we consume and disposing of what we consume in a better way recycling more are using more based on the current science whatever necessary reductions in carbon emissions need a timeline to prevent catastrophic climate change at least at probably more like ninety percent below nineteen ninety levels by twenty fifty is what keeps us below that two degree threshold and only talk about twenty fifteen numbers those are the things that are sort of the easiest to understand in the context of a scientific climate model that it's pretty far out there from a political perspective her from inaction perspective i think the no poor debate in congress now in the international negotiations is about the twenty twenty target and last year at this time at the international meeting that target that was agreed to for the developed world for countries

like the us was from twenty five to forty percent below ninety nine the levels by twenty twenty to give you context the most aggressive bills in congress now are on the order of just getting our emissions back to nineteen ninety levels by twenty twenty so we sort of did a lot deeper than so far like that leaders have been willing to get to reduce its emissions reduction would you recommend for twenty twenty what the scientists say we need to do to avoid catastrophic disruptions are they what they came to in bali a glass international meeting is what we should be aspiring to both because it's backed out of the best science we have it's as far as we can tell with our best scientific tools what nature is telling us is necessary and nature of course isn't running for anything in she's not negotiating with anyone she's just on a salary and so that's the scientific answer it's also very importantly the international diplomatic answer there is no national or state or local solution to global warming in the absence of a global commitment what we're doing at the state and local and national level is critically

important especially to the rest of the world which has grown somewhat discouraged about the lack of us action at the national level so what we do in our own communities as absolutely essential but of course in order for it to work in the end we have to have a good global deal on that twenty five to forty percent below nineteen ninety levels by twenty twenty is what emerged from the international negotiations and that's where we should go i'm diane warren and we're speaking with kc golden policy director for climate solutions or topic is where we stand in our efforts to fight global warming and how we need to proceed to prevent catastrophic climate change and you're tuned to the sustainability segment of mind over matters and katie eckstein it point three of them and on the web at x t bird oh archie what do you see as the most effective steps that have been taken to reduce our greenhouse gas emission so far the i'm really glad to begin this part of the discussion because you don't we talk about the science it sounds sort of big and remote and hard to figure out where to

put your lever to really start to change things and the truth is the most important part of the solution to global warming is the clean energy revolution that we need to have for so many other reasons we need to have it for national security reasons we need to have it for economic reasons you know we're beginning this huge new process of public intervention to recover the economy but the economy is like a bucket with giant holes in the bottom and that's the fossil fuels that we consume the money we pour into our economic bucket that just leaks out the bottom and goes to houston or riyadh or wherever it goes to to import fossil fuels but straight out of our local economies so this business of ending our fossil fuel addiction of waging this clean energy revolution is what we desperately need to save the climate but it's also the single most productive thing we can do to re engineer our economy and our prosperity so that it can actually work and i can actually last year the best example right now that's on everybody's mind is the gm

bailout for the big three auto bailout are we just gonna throw money at the same old dying jalopy or are we going to use this opportunity to leverage a historic public intervention that gives us the automotive revolution we need to actually solve these problems that's a really fateful choice and we're making it right now in the context of the economic recovery so we ask about one of the most effective things we've done and that we can do far away without exception it's changing our energy system to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels so does that look like in a local contacts it means more efficient buildings and appliances and all of our daily lives and our offices and our homes our industries which also reduce our energy costs and overwhelmingly in the puget sound region where most us surge are it means alternatives to getting your car loan to get yourself from point a point b and we've been to be honest i think too slow and investing in those alternatives we're starting to see some of them become available what's on transit available next year we're starting to get a better bus service but it

it still true that you know i think most folks are ready and eager to gather their cars but oftentimes don't have that something good to get into to get more than you to god so making those investments collectively and then making those choices individually to use alternatives to cars that's probably the single biggest part of the solution that so many in the puget sound can do today to what extent has the kyoto agreement and helpful well i think it's been very helpful because you know we were just talking about local action and i think everyone knows that it's the right thing to do to screen those compact fluorescent light bulbs and choose alternatives to getting in your car but that's only really hopeful it's only really effective in the context of a global campaign for solutions and that's what chiodo is a global campaign for solutions it's certainly not everything we need to solve the problem but it has been a steady drumbeat of mutual commitment among the nations of the world to play our respective roles in what must be a global

campaign that mutual commitment needs to be strengthened it needs to be accelerated and above all it needs to have the full and enthusiastic participation of the world's largest emitter the us which as a hat up until now insofar as kyoto has fallen short of its biggest single problem is that the biggest polluter has been standing on the sidelines with their arms folded and when i say that i mean our federal representatives in the international negotiations it's been an international embarrassment it's appalling what the us has done to undermine those negotiations but at the same time in communities like seattle in states like washington and the west coast states we've been moving ahead with solutions despite our federal government's unwillingness to be part of the solution and the rest of the world has heard the kyoto would not have happened it would none have gone into effect if we didn't start bringing the mayors and the governors and the civic society a nonprofit to the international negotiations to show the rest of the world a different face of

america the face of america that really is determined to be part of the solution and that allowed the international negotiations to continue to proceed the rest of the world was given up on america if it wasn't for the seattle some washington's and the californians saying that we were determined to be part of the answer even more for obama was saying something very different so that's sustained us for a lawyers and those international negotiations and kept yellow alive but now thank heavens we appeared to have a like a prisoner new administration that's determined to draw and with the world community and they need that sign from us this week in poland and next year in copenhagen in order for the international work to continue to move ahead could you elaborate on how well the obama administration and a new congress are likely to help us move forward and our steps to address climate change well i think the signs are really positive the obama administration has clearly demonstrated not only that they understand what peril were and from a climate perspective but that they understand the opportunity that comes with

green redevelopment of our economy and an economic recovery strategy based on solutions to fossil fuel dependence and global warming president elect obama said that you know when you look around at what's going to drive an economic recovery you always need to invest in a new source of prosperity can just patched the old way of doing things and the single most promising new driver for prosperity is the new energy economy those are obama's words and i think they're formulating those plans right now it's a little hard to predict exactly will come out of the new congress but i think that's all signs point to a really a new and very encouraging actual understanding that economic recovery and climate solutions are inextricably linked and that we should take this opportunity to rebuild our economy and rebuild it for a prosperity that can last and prosperity that solves the global warming crisis trade has been talked about a lot is one of the solutions to our crisis doesn't reveal of cap and trade let's pick those words a

party say the mend and they have come to be sort of welded together almost as one word let's start with cap what is a kappa kappa is a firm legal quantitative commitment to reduce our global warming pollution and to reduce our fossil fuel dependence we need that commit but you know after how many decades of presidents telling us that we're going to do something about our fossil fuel addiction and palate isn't short term measures and half answers that really haven't help solve the problem are we finally going to get a real enforceable declining commitment with a schedule a timetable to reduce our fossil fuel dependence that's what happens so we absolutely need a cab now once we engineer real cap then what are we going to do to achieve the cap and to tune the economy to the treatment early cap so that we continue to generate prosperity and jobs while reducing our emissions and fulfilling his command the mission training we call a cabin invest but this idea that you'd have tradable

pollution permits under the cap is one way of achieving the cap reducing the cost of the achieving the cap and generating private investment solutions but it's one among many ways a carbon tax would do many of the same things energy efficiency standards better fuel efficiency standards for cars is an absolute necessity and that will help to the economy to the achievement in the cab renewable resource requirements like our initiative nine thirty seven here in washington the clean energy initiative which by the way is under attack in the legislature this year those kind of things help tune the economy to the achievement gap but i think that the first and foremost question is how can we get a really solid commitment to do what is right and necessary to solve the climate problem and to reduce our fossil fuel dependence and the campus a killer i think the capital investor cap and trade portion of it can work if it's done right and if it's not done right it can be a disastrous so it our

challenge now in this year's legislature in washington and all again is going to be to put in place the cabin in the system under the western climate initiative which as part of a seven stage effort that is fair and by that i mean the right to pollute should not be given away for free it should be auctioned off polluters should pay the procedure be invested in ways that first and foremost protect the most vulnerable consumers and second invest in our transition to a clean energy economy and it should be as simple and free of loopholes as possible you know as you can imagine a big important tectonic change in our economy like this busy me a lot a lobbyist lined up with a lot of ideas about how to get around the policy or how to reduce its effectiveness or have a car beside a loophole for their particular economic interests and you expect that in a pluralistic system but his policies not gonna work if we loaded down with too many complicated and counterproductive loopholes so minimize the loopholes make it fairer polluters perry invest the proceeds a cap and trade policy like that can really

work and religion or assault and i guess the thing i want emphasize is you know our state legislature doesn't allow money to play around with her in a very very deep budget hole this year so there gonna be allocating pain among a lot of worthy public enterprises we need some public investment in the clean energy revolution but the biggest driver the biggest source of money for the clean energy revolution is the money you pay every month to your utility the money you pay when you go to the gas pump that private money that goes from your pocket into the energy economy and most of that never goes to a government that's the money that we have to turn away from the problem and toward solutions and that's why these cabin invesco policies or carbon taxes and others are so critically important at that private money moving away from a problem and toward the solutions you are listening to the sustainability segment of mind over matters and katie xt seattle ninety point the fm and on the web add k e x feat an orgy i'm diane hein and my guest is kc golden policy director for climate solutions our topic is where we stand in our efforts to fight

global warming and how we need to proceed to prevent catastrophic climate change what would you say to those who claim that the solutions that we've been talking about but we don't really have time for those to develop and we need something much more drastic you know i would argue with anybody who says that we need to move as fast as we possibly can and there's a are wonderful study done people can look it up if it out all mine for some wonky stuff on the web there's a study called stabilization wages that basically shows it could do what we need to do by scaling up known technologies to four commercial scale so for instance if we had two billion cars in the world which is primal haven't twenty fifty they caught sixty miles to the gallon instead of thirty you have one of the seven wedges that you need in order to solve the problem or sixty mile a gallon cars is well within what we know how to do now i guess what i'd say to those people is we have to start acting like it's an emergency because of this we have to radically and quickly do the things that we know how to do to solve this problem so if people are frustrated that we're not doing that originally

enough the right we need to declare that emergency and fully deployed everything we know how to do and we need to convey tim you to advance new energy technologies particularly in the area of solar and energy storage and others that are going to help us do it even better but many of the things that we need to do we know how to do and were just not do an emotional enough you see bullying society to a better sense of emergency so that we can learn faster well one interesting question to be honest i think it would be the combination of some focusing extra all of that you know unfortunately we are loading the dice right now for more katrina's potentially more nine eleven some nine eleven certainly had its roots in our fossil fuel dependence on our relationship to the fossil fuel exploring parts of the world and you know sadly and tragically we have already loaded the dice for more emergencies like that the question is how do we respond when we have those emergencies those focusing moments that where it's possible to change the rules of politics as

usual and all get together and say you know what we need to do drop are worn out the theological and political constraints and divisions and do something big an urgent and important together our generation i'm pushing fifty to lead your listeners are probably a lot younger but even my generation doesn't we've never really had the experience of what is it like to pull together as a society and do something big emerging important together the model that we always hearken back to is world war two and we had a terrible focusing event we had extraordinary presidential leadership i think those two things coming together at the same time are part of what takes and part of it is us as a society learning to understand and hear and play our roles in a collective story a collective narrative about who we are and what are defining challenges are and how we're going to respond we know our practice it that that's going to be something new

for us born after you're out how to do it and you know one of the tragedies of the last day years as we have focused in moments like that moments where we were all scared to death or we were all looking around at each other and saying what are we gonna do in response to this terrible tragedy and what we hear from our president that we here we have nothing to fear but fear itself not we heard go to the mall or you're doing a great job brownie those are terribly disappointing experiences and i think the next time that something scary at that scale happens i think were in a year a very different on a call from our present and we need that in order to get together and really tackle this challenge at the level of the problem we've alluded to this a bit earlier but how do you see the economic downturn affecting our efforts to combat climate change it all depends on us you know as president elect obama said it's it's about how we respond it's possible that we will reduce our expectations for climate solutions and pull back because we think that it's a

time of economic constrained and we can afford to invest in solutions that would be exactly the wrong response in an incredibly shortsighted response i mean it was amazing how quickly a chorus came together and threw seven hundred billion dollars at the financial industry two thousand dollars for every american went to this undefined changing bailout of the financial industry so it's clear that we can invest that scale one we decide that it's an emergency and so part of it is just deciding that climate in fossil fuel dependence are the emergency that they in fact are and mobilizing our resources according way i think the economic downturn is telling us something it's telling us that the economy in the form of prosperity that we have built is fundamentally broken we were floating along on bubbles of cheap get and cheap fossil fuels easy credit for a long time now those bubbles apart and the question in front of us in front of congress this very moment is the engineer this auto bailout is are you going to just lubricate the same

old decrepit broken bankrupt economic machinery that got us to this point so that it can hurtle somewhat more efficiently over the cliff that it's falling over or we don't take this opportunity to fundamentally think how we produce goods and services and prosperity in this country and there's no better place to start than the automotive companies i mean the price of this bailout oughta be a full scale automotive revolution and we've never have more leverage or ability to do that because because of the economic crisis the usual rules of political constraint and political engagement are being suspended and we're getting together to do something big now the question is is it could be something of the works or is it just to be throwing good money after bad you what's the message you'd like to leave our listeners we are all the solution i have thanksgiving with a young man he's in college right now and describe to me the night of the election and what happened on the campus where everybody poured out of their dorms and libraries

in elation with a new sense of possibility about what we can do together i remember i was in college in nineteen eighty when ronald reagan was elected when i was on campus i was on the berkeley campus campus that governor reagan had tear gassed and we poured out of our hat dorms and libraries that night when a very different spirit and i thought about that what a great thing to be growing up now and have your first sort of moment of real political consciousness be this moment of extraordinary opening this moment of extraordinary possibility and i guess the message i would leave us with that is let's not look at this economic downturn it's a message that we need to reduce our aspirations reduce our hopes constrain our ideas about work on a world we can go together the economic downturn as a sign that it's urgently necessary that we need to build a very different world together and we should be very ambitious and impatient and determined

about setting forth to do just that right now will thanks so much for being here casey thank you diana pleasure we have just been speaking with kc golden policy director for climate solutions for more information check on the web add davi davi davi about climate solutions dot org again that's climate solutions that orgy the sustainability segment of mind over matters program you just heard will be on the streaming archives section of katie excuse website a k e x e dot org chief for the next fourteen days and diane horn thanks for listening and issued a tune into the sustainability segment again next week a ninety point we have an uncanny x the bad orgy