For the second year in a row, California Governor Jerry Brown opened Intersolar 2014, part of the Semicon West conference in San Francisco, with a rousing keynote address supporting solar power and calling for renewed efforts to combat the urgent problem of climate change for the sake of future generations.
San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee spoke next, along with New York State Senator Kevin S. Parker, Franz Untersteller, environmental minister from Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the CALSEIA.
“There is a real mining of the imagination, even more powerful than the mining of the Sierras for gold. And as we mine our imaginations, we have to invent not just gadgets and clever ways of doing whatever, we have to keep our eye on the big goal, and the big goal is certainly to build a more equitable and just society, but one that is just to all the creatures and to ourselves over time.and that’s why solar is so important, but along with all the other sources of energy, and along with all the ways that we can adjust how we and the generations that come after us can live in a way humanity will continue and we won’t devastate this wonderful gift of creation.” ~ Governor Brown
“We have a long way to go, and while it’s very exciting to be with like minded people, it’s well to just take a pause and realize that the track we’re on now is not sustainable, we have to make a turn, and a shift. Any time you’re talking about an organism, physical or political, those shifts aren’t that easy to make.” ~ Jerry Brown
San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee gave a keynote address to open Intersolar 2014 just after Governor Jerry Brown, part of the Semicon West conference in San Francisco.
“Just a few months ago, we put solar on our Davies Symphony Hall …really the greenest symphony in the world”~ San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee
Other keynote speakers included New York State Senator Kevin S. Parker, Franz Untersteller, environmental minister from Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the CALSEIA.
New York State Senator Kevin S. Parker
Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the CALSEIA
Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, appeared at ClimateOne at the Commonwealth Club to discuss several topics, including attempts to ban assault weapons, the use of drones, and climate change. This video features her comments related to energy and climate change. During her appearance, Feinstein repeatedly stressed the importance of taking action to avert climate change and spoke critically of the Keystone XL pipeline, yet paradoxically acknowledged in a follow up press conference that governmental action on climate change was “not on the high priority list”. She said she intends to introduce a $10/ton carbon tax bill, with half of proceeds to be used to pay down the national debt.
Senator Feinstein: “The climate has already warmed at least one degree over a hundred years. And you know, people I think don’t really understand. They think the earth is immutable, they think we can’t destroy it, that it’s here to stay, and that it’s always been this way. It’s not so. You know, some two hundred million plus years ago, there’s geologic evidence to say that maybe there was only one land mass on earth and it all split apart. I don’t know whether that’s true or false, I’ve read a lot of science on the subject.”
“The question is, can we really bite the bullet and make the decision that we’re going to save the planet, because if it warms … 4 to 7 degrees, it’s too late.” ~ Senator Dianne Feinstein
“But ever since the industrial revolution when we began to pump carbon dioxide through fuel into the atmosphere. The atmosphere is very limited, it’s maybe seven miles up, and that’s it. And it’s like a shell. And so every bit of this that’s pumped into the atmosphere stays, it doesn’t dissipate. So as we fill the atmosphere with pollutants, methane, carbon dioxide, other things, what happens is, it warms the earth. And it begins with, animal habitat disappears, it begins with the ocean beginning to rise, it begins with more violent hurricanes, tornadoes, funnel clouds in the pacific, where in my youth they never used to be, they are now, on occasion. And, lightning strikes, I remember one June where there were thousands of lightning strikes that started hundreds of small fires in California. When it rains the drops are bigger, the rains more violent. Drought is more prevalent. So I think, actually, what’s going to be the ultimate changer, is weather.”
“People see weather, they see hurricanes, they see the devastation, and so I think eventually, people are going to come around to support restrictions on carbon dioxide, maybe a fee on the use of carbon that goes in to replace our deficit, our debt. A twenty dollar fee I think is like 1.2 trillion in revenue over ten years. If you just take half that, it’s 600 billion. And it accomplishes something.”
Greg Dalton: “Is there much support for that in the Senate?”
Senator Feinstein: “I wouldn’t say there’s much, I would say this – people are coming to realize now. And we have a little caucus that meets and discusses, we’ve had I think three global warming bills up, they didn’t get, I mean they got thirty six or so votes, but, everything’s getting worse. The weather is getting worse, and the climate change is getting worse. And actually since 2008, good energy has doubled, that’s the good thing. That you know electric cars are being more prevalent, hybrids are being more prevalent. People are saving money. So good things are happening, the question is, can we really bite the bullet and make the decision that we’re going to save the planet, because if it warms, and I heard your opening spot, 4 to 7 degrees, it’s too late. If we can confine this warming to one to two degrees, then, there’s big change, but it’s handle able. And that’s where we should strive to go. China in particular has a terrible, terrible problem. Deaths are now up from pollution. People are wearing masks virtually all winter long in Shanghai and Beijing.”
Greg Dalton: “And there’s been some recent reports putting price tags on all of that, the price of the health loss of life, etc. President Obama in his inaugural address and state of the Union pledged stronger action on climate. Do you think he’s doing enough? Specifically, what should he do?”
Senator Feinstein: “The President has so many things, and everybody says do you think he’s doing enough on this or that or the other thing, and he’s going to appoint a new EPA director. The EPA now has the ability to move ahead, so it’s very important that the EPA director be strong and be willing to take the action that’s necessary to help us all save this planet.”
Greg Dalton: “And you think Gina McCarthy will get confirmed?”
Senator Feinstein: “That’s a good question, everything is questioned these days. It’s the first time I have ever seen a president go through years of his presidency without being able to confirm members of his own cabinet.”
Greg Dalton: “And the judiciary?”
Senator Feinstein: “And the judiciary, well the judiciary is sort of a place apart. But for the executive branch to work, having your cabinet in place is a no brainer. You know, everybody says well elections matter, yes they matter. Whoever is president has to be able to govern and the way you govern is through your executives which are your cabinet secretaries.”
Greg Dalton: “Do you think the U.S. should approve the Keystone pipeline?”
Senator Feinstein: “I have just been reading a National Geographic article on tar sands, and everything I’ve seen in that article is bad. Now this tar sands project is up in Alberta. I’m told that the area is bigger than the state of Florida. I’m told that it’s a forested area which they mowed down and then began to dig the huge giant lakes, that they pour chemicals in to produce this form of tar sands oil. The earth is defaced forever. Now we have to make up our minds – do we want to deface large portions of our earth forever? I don’t think so, because we’re making progress on clean energy, and that ought to be where we go. And some people say well, you know, if that pipeline isn’t built north to south through the center of our country, they’re only going to do it east to west and send it to China. I think that is really not a very good argument because I think we really have to look at tar sands.”
Greg Dalton: “Another area of potential large oil development is here in California – the Monterey shale new fracking technologies making accessible about 15 billion barrels of oil which is equal to half the amount originally in the north slope of Alaska. Should that be developed and should California tax that? California is the only state that doesn’t tax oil extraction.”
Senator Feinstein: “Well I sure think we ought to tax it. Because I don’t think candidly that it’s all that necessary. There will be no drilling off the coast of California if Senator Boxer and I prevail, and we have so far. And the house delegation as well. The people of our state voted, and we voted against offshore oil drilling and I believe we ought to keep that vote. But my emphasis would be on clean energy, you know the wind farms, the solar facilities…and there’s so much research going on, on different forms of fuels. I’m amazed at what they think they can make fuel out of these days. So you know, I say, that’s just great, let’s do it. And leave these fossil fuels alone because they pollute the atmosphere.”
Water
“I spend a lot of my time on water in California. There is no question in my view that we are on our way to a much drier climate, we are on it because of global warming. We are on our way to the major source of water, which is the Sierra Nevada snow pack, drying up. And it’s very serious, and so there are big water fights. Right now the water allocation for south of Delta farmers I believe is 20% of their contract amount, that is way too little. A farmer can’t plant, irrigate and harvest with twenty percent of his contract amount. He probably can’t go to the banks and get the loans that he might need with twenty percent of his contract.”
National Security
“If you have low lying areas, let’s take Bangladesh, let’s take some of the bigger islands, and they are flooded, where do people go, and what’s the result of that movement of people in low lying areas all over the world? What’s the result in oceans warming so that fishing stocks are killed or no longer as prevalent. So these are the kinds of national security concerns I think that emanate from that. And what was being done is having our satellites track various areas so that we could note changes over years- the melting arctic, the melting Antarctic. Greenland which is substantial melting, and from that you see the movement of people that’s gonna have to take place and then what happens with that. ”
Greg Dalton: “And some people are very concerned about Indonesia, largest Muslim country, heavily dependent on fishing. If fishing starts to go down in Indonesia, what does that mean for stability…”
Senator Feinstein: “That’s what I tried to say, I wasn’t as eloquent as you were.”
Greg Dalton: “Last question is, how do you think climate change will affect you and your family in years ahead?”
Senator Feinstein: “Well, I have seven grandchildren, and I really believe it will affect them. And I really hate to say this, but I spent forty years in this life in government, and to end it and not have secured a world that’s capable of sustenance and beauty and wonder for my grandchildren, is just a crushing blow. So, I hope that within the next six years, you’re going to see a climate change bill pass in the Senate and the House and be signed by this President.”
Q (press conference): “What action can we expect on climate change?”
Senator Feinstein: “I think that’s hard to predict right now. I think it’s not on the high priority list. I think that a carbon fee is growing in popularity. It’s my intention – I know there’s been a bill introduced at twenty dollars a ton, and it’s my intention to introduce one at ten dollars a ton, and we’ll see what happens to it.”
Professor Robert Reich spoke to approximately 5000 people in Sproul Plaza at the University of California Berkeley culminating a General Strike & Day of Action. The general assembly of ‘Occupy Cal’ voted earlier that evening to resume the tent occupation that had been torn down by the university police Wednesday night last week amidst videos of police brutality against students who had locked arms to defend the initial occupation. This video includes real time views of the plaza packed with demonstrators.
Partial excerpt:
“Fortyseven years ago as you know we were graced with the elequence and the power of Mario Savio’s words from these steps. And they were words that echoed and richocheted across America, Words about the importance and centrality of freedom of speech and assembly and freedom of expression and social justice. And those words continue to live on. In fact, the sentiments and words that Mario Savio expressed fortyseven years ago, are as relevant if not more relevant today than they were then. Because today unlike then we have a few Supreme Court decisions, such as ‘Citizens United’ against the Federal Election Commission.” [crowd boos]
The general assembly’s vote and decision to occupy is announced and a tent is carried up the Mario Savio steps while the crowd awaits Robert Reich
Excerpt Continued:
“Did you just boo the Supreme Court of the United States? There are a few Supreme Court decisions that have said that essentially that money is speech and corporations are people. Now when you think that money is speech and corporations are people then it becomes extraordinarily important to protect the first amendment rights of ordinary Americans of regular citizens of students of everybody else who doesn’t have the money and who is not a corporation.”
Students, faculty and staff at the University of California staged a Nov 15 General Strike and Day of Action against tuition fee hikes and recent policy brutality against student activists. After a large noon rally, thousands marched through the city of Berkeley.
Upon returning from the march to Sproul Plaza on the University of California Berkeley campus, the demonstrators were joined by a large contingent – and a tent – from the recently dismantled encampment of Occupy Oakland in Oscar Grant Plaza (Frank Ogawa Plaza).
The marchers return to Sproul Plaza after a march through Berkeley
Speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, U.S. Presidential Candidate Representative Michelle Bachmann accused the President of Iran of having threatened both Israel and United States with future nuclear attacks. Minnesota’s Republican Congresswoman did not give a source or date for these alleged and potentially inflammatory statements, though she did mention her position on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. As Iran’s President has repeatedly denied that Iran seeks to acquire nuclear weapons, it would be in direct contradiction to those claims for him to make extreme threats of this type.
text excerpt:
“I’m very concerned about the threat from Iran and the Iranian threat in my mind is the premier threat that is dominating the Middle East today. It is the acquisition of a nuclear weapon. I say that because of the statements that have been made by the President of Iran as recently as three weeks prior to entering the United States to speak to the U.N. National Assembly. The statement was simply this: He sought the eradication of Israel from the Earth. That is in parallel and in tandem to statements he gave prior to that saying that once Iran attains a nuclear weapon they would use that nuclear weapon to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth and use a nuclear weapon also against the United States of America. Those are highly destructive statements and ones that I believe should be taken seriously.”
“Our enemy is not the Iranian people. Our enemy is an Iranian leadership that has the stated intention of using a nuclear weapon against the United States and using a nuclear weapon against our ally Israel.” ~ Rep. Bachmann
“…We need to take the issue of the Iranian threat extremely seriously because of the benefit of time that Iran has had, they have been able to come closer to achieving their goal, and as was stated early, I am privileged to sit on the the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. We deal with the nation’s classified secrets, we deal with the threats to the United States both within the interior of our borders and those that come to us externally. And I will say that while this election is about jobs and the economy, we cannot forget the fact that there are very real national security concerns that we also need to be part of this very important process in the 2012 selection process.”
…
Q: “How would you as President respond to that Iranian threat?”
“I would respond with absolutely everything that the United States can put on the line, because we cannot abide, we must not and we cannot abide an Iran with a nuclear weapon. Because of the stated intentions of Iran, we would be subjecting the American people to the deployment of a nuclear weapon against our own people, and also to the state of Israel. This is something that we need to consider. I believe when a madman speaks you listen. And the statements of the President of Iran have been those of a genocidal maniac.”
Congresswoman Bachmann
“…My statements are about the President of Iran, my statements are not about the Iranian people, I want to make that very clear. Because we know in 2009 there was a yearning for freedom from the Iranian people, and I believe at that point it would have been prudent for the United States to do everything that we could to foster that desire for the Iranian people to be free of oppression. Unfortunately that did not occur.”
“Our enemy is not the Iranian people. Our enemy is an Iranian leadership that has the stated intention of using a nuclear weapon against the United States and using a nuclear weapon against our ally Israel.”
Ironically, Iran could interpret Bachmann’s statement itself as a veiled threat of nuclear attack against Iran, because “absolutely everything that the United States can put on the line” might be taken to include the use of nuclear weapons by the United States. Bachmann has previously criticized Obama’s rules of nuclear engagement and has advocated a policy of nuclear retaliation in the event of a chemical or biological attack against the United States.
Several speakers spoke at Civic Center in San Francisco following a march through San Francisco as part of a global day of action to ‘move beyond fossil fuels’. This video features excerpts from speakers Bill McKibben of 350.org, Carl Anthony of Urban Habitat, and Gail McLaughlin, Mayor of Richmond, California
“On November sixth were going back to the White House, and were going to surround it. We’re going to surround it with human beings. And depending on the kind of mood you’re in, it’s kind of an O to encourage the President to do the right thing, or sort of a symbolic house arrest. You know, those are the options. And we need, since he has the power himself to stop this pipeline, for him to do it. We need all of all leaders who have power and responsibility, like the people we’ve been hearing today, to step up and do the right thing.” ~ Bill McKibben
Moving Planet demonstrations took place around the world today, calling for a move beyond fossil fuels. In San Francisco thousands of lively demonstrators marched along Market Street chanting “hey hey ho ho, fossil fuels have got to go”. The march was followed by a rally at Civic Center where several speakers addressed the crowd, including Bill McKibben of 350.org. McKibben and several others present had been arrested about a month ago in the nation’s capital for protesting against the Keystone XL pipeline which would bring Canadian tar sands oil to Texas for refining.
United States Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar made an appearance at Climate One at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco primarily to discuss water issues. In addition he made some comments regarding energy, climate change, and fracking fluids, excerpts of which are included in this video.
Selected Excerpts:
Interior Secretary Salazar
Question by Greg Dalton: “When Barack Obama clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 he gave a speech with which he said people would look back on his presidency as a time when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. Since that time the administration has opened up 2.3 billion tons of coal mining in Wyoming, the Arctic potentially to drilling, and potentially on track to approve a Keystone XL pipeline which would bring some of the dirtiest fuel from the Alberta tar sands to Texas. So how does that record square with the presidents pledge address climate change?”
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar:
0:40 ‘I think, Greg, what one must do is put the issue in the context of what it is that we’re doing on energy, and I think that when you look at the President and the energy team and the programs that we have put forward we are doing more that what has been done in the time of history.’
‘The time will come when the Congress will awaken to the need to have a comprehensive energy and climate change legislative framework’
‘On fuel efficiency, our vehicles are going to be getting forty to fifty miles to the gallon we’re going to be saving billions of barrels of oil a year. That means less CO2 that’s going to been burned. We’ve embraced a whole new ethic on what we’re doing with renewable energy, from solar to geothermal to wind – that is moving forward. We’ve invested billions of dollars in efficiency and in new materials to try to deal with the energy issue which is really the nexus between what happens here on Earth and the changes in climate. Now, have we been able to do as much as we wanted to do? The answer is no. We wanted to pass comprehensive energy and climate change legislation bills, we worked on that very hard.’
‘…Our own view as an administration is that the time will come when the Congress will awaken to the need to have a comprehensive energy and climate change legislative framework. … the principles that will keep driving this agenda forward in the years and the decades ahead, are at the end of the day about national security and the fact that now we’re so dependent on countries that really don’t have our interests at stake, our economic security, because we are now sending 750 billion dollars a year overseas, and finally the environmental security of the planet. ‘
Coal:
3:04 ‘The fact of the matter you know coal is one of the greatest emitters of C02, and there are ways in which you can deal with that, including the conversion … of coal plants over to natural gas which is much less CO2 emitting. But … almost 50% of our electricity comes from coal supplies so we need to find the right way to transition from coal to the new energy world, and in addition to that and something which we worked on very hard, is to find a way to find a future for coal supplies in the United States by finding a way of burning it cleanly so you won’t have the same problems of the past.’
‘And so it’s carbon capture and sequestration, and moving forward to those kinds of projects which hopefully we’ll be able to find that one of the most abundant energy supplies that we have here in America will have a place in the future energy portfolio of the country.’
Fracking fluids:
‘Seven or eight months ago we brought together a group of industry leaders and others, the Department of Interior to talk about fracking and disclosure. My sense is that many of the responsible actors in the industry want to make sure that there is disclosure of fracking fluids, because they see it as I see, they see it as David and I have seen it over the last several years, and that is that unless industry is forthcoming and is disclosing its fluids that it’s injecting into the underground, it’s going to become the Achilles heel that essential destroys any future for natural gas industry in shale here in the United States. And so, we’re in the process of making some decisions that we’ll be to be rolling over the next several months about how we’re going to deal with the issue of fracking fluids on the public estate, which is huge, because between lands that we control at Interior, as well as those that we control on behalf of the Department of Agriculture, there are about 700 million acres in the United States.’
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest, spoke before an enthusiastic crowd at Climate One at the Commonwealth Club. The event, “Blessed 350”, focused on issues of climate change and systemic transformation .
Selected Excerpts
“So we’ve got to adapt to that which we can no longer prevent, but even more importantly probably, is to prevent that which there is just no way for us to adapt to.” ~ Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben 0:00 “The fact that we’re in a period of economic trauma probably is a good sign that we need to start thinking much more systemically about what we’re going to do differently. My guess is that the economy that we’re moving towards looks less to growth than to durability and resilience and security. And it’s probably going to be far more – the trajectory will be more in the direction of local instead of the ever expanding outward globalism that’s relying on an endless supply of cheap fossil energy to make it possible.. I think we’re in one of the really interesting moments that has a lot of promise and the only real worry is that climate change is happening so fast that it may knock the props out from under the whole thing before we can get where we need to go. ”
“Just to give you the easiest example: the place you can see this new economy emerging is in food. And it’s been wonderful to watch, as the local food movement has grown and the number of farmers markets have doubled and then doubled. That’s the fastest growing part of our food economy. Fast enough that last year the USDA said that there are actually more farms in America instead of fewer for the first time in a hundred and fifty years which is great. ”
“I live in Vermont, which is one of the headquarters along with the bay area of this sort of local food movement. When we had hurricane Irene dump more rain on Vermont than ever has fallen there – and direct consequence of the fact that the warm air holds more water vapor than cold – when that happened at the end of August it wiped out every farmer in the state. There’s nothing growing there now. I mean everything was flooded and submerged. Our best local farms underwater. We’ve got to take on these environmental challenges to have any hope of being able to do the kind of really interesting transformative economic work that’s possible now.”
“What we need from Obama is conviction, and spine and a clear vision of the future…. And no Congress can stop him from being a human being. And no Congress can stop him from being a father to two beautiful children and saying I am going to do everything I can to insure that my daughters have a livable world. Nothing stops him from doing that.” ~ Paul Hawken
Paul Hawken 2:13 “But what do we really need to change? What we need to change is the system, and the system cannot change until there is a manifest crisis that is shared and the pain is shared. That’s just the way human beings are; I’m not wishing it upon us. Whether it’s a climatic crisis like two force five hurricanes climbing up the coast in the same year that really makes an impression, or whether it’s economic or whether it’s both because they’re not unrelated, I don’t know what it will be. But in the meantime, what I see happening, and why I wrote Blessed [Unrest], and why I see Bill doing 350.org, is that it’s extraordinarily important for people to build and create the basis for a future; it’s more than resiliency, it’s what’s going to succeed in an ecological sense the system that’s in place now. It may look marginal, the small farm or NGO may look inconsequential. But as I said, there’s no such thing as inconsequential action – there’s only inconsequential non-action.”
Bill McKibben 4:44 “I think that we’ve got two tasks now to save society. The interesting and powerful fun one takes all our creativity, is to figure out how to build these beautiful resilient interesting local and regional economies that can roll with the punches. That’s really where I wish I could spend all my time, that’s what I mostly write about, and Vermont where I live is a place like California which is a leader in it, and nothing I’d rather due. I was home 50 days last year I think, because the second part of this task, the emergency part, is making sure that we don’t push so hard that that can’t happen. So far we’ve raised the temperature of the planet one degree, but the climatologists are quite robust in their consensus that that will be four degrees by centuries end unless we get our act together very very fast.”
Bill McKibben 5:37 “You can’t adapt to change at that level. So we’ve got to adapt to that which we can no longer prevent, but even more importantly probably, is to prevent that which there is just no way for us to adapt to. We’re already pushing the outer limits. We’ve moved out the Holocene, the ten thousand years of benign climatic stability that underwrote the rise of the human civilization and we’re into something else. And the question is how deep into that something else are we gonna go? And if you think it’s hard for us to adapt to those things in California that has plenty of money, I mean, one of the pleasures of helping start 350.org is that we work in every country in the world except North Korea. So I’ve been everywhere, and you know, this is already a matter of life and death, and all too often death for people in place after place after place around the world. And of course the horrible ethical irony of that is that the places that are hit hardest are the places that have done the least to cause the damage. We don’t just have a practical onus on us to do something, we have a profound moral one too.”
Bill McKibben 7:08 “Our problem is far and away caused by the fact that the fossil fuel industry, which is the most profitable industry on earth, has all the financial means at their disposal to keep us from taking action and clearly they are willing to us it. They are willing to keep going, the record profits they’re making for another five or ten years, even if it means the ruination of the planet. There’s nothing polite about the political fights that we’re now in… If we cannot break the power of the fossil fuel industry to delay change and action then we can’t do anything. And that’s the work that we’re about . And that’s why people are going to jail. And that’s why people are doing huge things, you know 350 we’ve had these great enormous days of action on every country on earth. It’s why people are stepping up. And that’s what the battle is, people versus very concentrated pockets of money”
Bill McKibben 9:30 “Everybody who got arrested was in coat and tie or a dress, you know. And the reason was to kind of demonstrate to the rest of the world who the radicals in this scenario are. The people who work and Chevron and Shell and Exxon are radicals. They are willing to alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere in order to get money. That’s as radical an act as any person who ever lived has undertaken. ”
“Those of us who are trying to preserve the world in something like the form we once know it are in this sense deeply conservative. And it’s importance to get that across. To understand what the ideologies around this fight really are.”
This is already a matter of life and death, and all too often death for people in place after place after place around the world. And of course the horrible ethical irony of that is that the places that are hit hardest are the places that have done the least to cause the damage. We don’t just have a practical onus on us to do something, we have a profound moral one too.” ~ Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben 10:21 “We know the thing that we have to do. Everybody who’s ever looked at it knows that if you put a serious price on carbon to reflect the damage that it does to the environment then we would begin to move much more quickly and gracefully in the right direction. The only reason we don’t do that is because of the incredible power of the fossil fuel industry to prevent that from happening. …Look Exxon made more money last year than any company in the history of money. In our political system that gives them way more power than they deserve.”
“And they’re using that power to prevent change from happening. And they’re using that power right now to try to make sure. You now, and all those companies. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Which the bigger contributor to elections in the last cycle was the US chamber of commerce, and they put 94% of their money into the campaigns of climate deniers. They used that power to retard what scientists and economists and everyone else knows that we need to do and that’s the shameful part.”
Paul Hawken 11:31 “What we need from Obama is conviction, and spine and a clear vision of the future. And that is totally absent. And he has that bully pulpit any time he wants it. And no Congress can stop him from being a human being. No Congress can stop him from being a father to two beautiful children and saying I am going to do everything I can to insure that my daughters have a livable world. Nothing stops him from doing that. And that’s what’s missing from the Obama Administration. The dysfunctional politics, that’s another issue … a real issue and a terrible issue. But that isn’t preventing him from standing up.”
Bill McKibben 12:14 “And there are issues on which Congress doesn’t get in the way. That’s one reason why we focused so hard on the Keystone Pipeline. Congress has not a thing to do with it. The President will either sign or not sign something called a Presidential Certificate of National Interest, and if he doesn’t sign it, then they cannot build this pipeline. His call. I mean, you know, he’s a basketball guy. It’s a twenty foot open jump shot from the top of the key and he’ll either take it or pass off, you know. And we’re doing our best to help him sort of nerve up to do it. They’ve made – did a couple of good things. We’ve got better mileage than we used to and there was some money in the original stimulus bill for a green things. Not anywhere near as much money as say the Chinese put into their similar stimulus bill. They’ve done a lot of bad things on their own. Earlier this year they opened up 750 million tons of coal underneath Wyoming for mining, and it wasn’t something Congress made them do, Ken Salazar and the President decided to do it. And that’s the equivalent of opening 300 new coal fired power plants. We can’t afford to be doing this any longer. Everything we know about the science of climate change says we’ve got to keep carbon in the ground. And if you can’t do that , we really can deal with it.”
“There’s no such thing as inconsequential action – there’s only inconsequential non-action” ~ Paul Hawken
Paul Hawken 13:34 “..and I think the same thing holds true in terms of renewable energy. And I think that in some ways the progressive movement has given a hall pass to some renewable technologies that are not renewable, and solar is one of them. It’s not renewable because you’re using high intensity energy, in this case Chinese coal powered plants, to make a low intensity generator that can’t turn around and make itself, and so therefore it’s not renewable. And second, it is the most toxic form of energy per kilowatt hour on the planet besides the tar sands, save for a meltdown at Fukushima.”
Greg Dalton “That’s because the photovoltaic cells, what goes into them…”
Paul Hawken “Oh it’s a witch’s brew. You have hexaflouride gases that are 25,000 times more powerful than CO2. And they’re escaping from the sintering ovens in China. A quarter ounce escapes and you have a net effect on environment in terms of increased carbon emissions, not negative….”
Paul Hawken 15:14 “There’s no point in making a renewable energy generator that has a three or five to one return on energy. That energy return on energy invested is laughable. It’s close to what the tar sands have: two or three to one. We came from a hundred to one world, that’s the oil and coal world. For every unit of energy that you put into the earth, a hundred units of energy came back, and that’s what we’re accustomed to The fact is surplus energy is the feedstock of civilization, and when you do not have surplus energy, you do not have civilization, you have hard scrabble existence. So you’ve got to be thinking about renewable technologies that have a really magnificent return on the energy invested, not a paltry one. So for all these reasons all I’m saying is that incumbent solar—thank you for getting us to where we are—is not going to take us to where we want to go”
Bill McKibben 17:28 “Oh there’s gotta be sooner or later a global agreement of some kind. I mean I don’t think there’s any other – this is the first global problem that we’ve ever had. If we can’t get, and we’re not going to get America, and China, and other big problems to agree without some serious pressure from the other countries of the world. You know, everybody’s going for the next sort of international negotiations in Durban this fall. And hopefully one of the things that’s going to happen there is the entire continent of Africa, the top half of which is locked in to a devastating drought right now, will be putting serious pressure on the world. That’s one of the things we do at 350.org, is try to mobilize the whole planet, and most of the people on that planet use so little carbon that they don’t have any effective way in their own personal lives to change the outcome, but politically they can put a lot of pressure on those of us who should be changing things.”
“Copenhagen the movie did not end the way that it was supposed to end. I mean we had a hundred and seventeen nations that we managed to sign on to this 350 parts per million right. That’s good, but they were the wrong 117 nations, all the poor and vulnerable ones. And the rich and addicted ones, led by our country, undermined that meeting and have done nothing since. The State Department has been, under President Obama, a complete and utter failure at getting any kind of international momentum going towards an agreement. We’ve got to change that.”
Bill McKibben 19:10 “Eventually – and here’s the thing about climate change, eventually this is going to happen. Eventually there are going to be enough bad things that have happened that people all over the world will be saying we have no choice but to do something. Sooner or later we’ll do it. The problem is, ‘sooner or later’ is the issue, because the physics and chemistry of climate change do not give us a very long window to operate, and if we choose later instead of sooner, than we might as well really bother frankly, because the problem will have passed the point where it is any longer susceptible to our amelioration”
Paul Hawken 23:46 “You know I think it’s importance to understand that we live in a very violent culture. I mean violent every step of the way. It’s not just violence in Iraq and Afghan. It’s violence to our children the way they’re educated. It’s violence to women – women know this the world over. It’s violent the way we treat our soils in agriculture. We’re violent to our forests. Our thermo-industrial system is violent in terms of chemistry. I mean every single aspect of what we do in this culture is violent. And what we’re talking about is moving to a world and a civilization that starts to looks at nature as mentor, that basically imitates. What we see in nature is is that life creates the conditions that are conducive to life and you don’t do that with force, you don’t do it with coercion. You don’t do it with power-over strategies.”
Q: “The United States got wealthy off of fossil fuels, and is not really willing to go along with the Kyoto approach or offer any reparations for the climate damage that we’ve already done. What can we hope for in terms of an agreement, I mean if Obama goes ahead with the pipeline, and when the petroleum price was getting too high and he opened the reserves to lower it, is there any way the United States can get up to the bully pulpit and say let’s make a deal. What can we offer?”
Bill McKibben 25:14 “Look, at the moment there’s no possibility right now for a global deal just like there’s no possibility for anything happening in Congress right now. We’re clearly not there, that’s why our job is to build a political movement big enough to force our leaders to actually lead. And that’s not something that has happened around climate until recently. The reason why we started 350.org was because at a certain point after sort of having written the first book about this and gotten a watch for fifteen or twenty years while nothing happened, it dawned on me that the strategy of having scientists whisper in the ear of politicians about what the biggest problem in the world was, wasn’t working, because while they were whispering in one ear, the fossil fuel industry was bellowing in the other ear about what they were gonna do. ”
“We’re never gonna have the money that the fossil fuel industry has, so we better find an alternate currency to work in, and that currency has gotta be our bodies and our creativity and our spirit and our passion. That’s what political movements are about, that’s what we’re trying to build. When we build one, as we build one, new political possibilities open up.”
And actually since 2008, good energy has doubled, that’s the good thing. That you know electric cars are being more prevalent, hybrids are being more prevalent. People are saving money. So good things are happening, the question is, can we really bite the bullet and make the decision that we’re going to save the planet, because if it warms, and I heard your opening spot, 4 to 7 degrees, it’s too late. If we can confine this warming to one to two degrees, then, there’s big change, but it’s handle able. And that’s where we should strive to go. China in particular has a terrible, terrible problem. Deaths are now up from pollution. People are wearing masks virtually all winter long in Shanghai and Beijing.”
“If you have low lying areas, let’s take Bangladesh, let’s take some of the bigger islands, and they are flooded, where do people go, and what’s the result of that movement of people in low lying areas all over the world? What’s the result in oceans warming so that fishing stocks are killed or no longer as prevalent. So these are the kinds of national security concerns I think that emanate from that. And what was being done is having our satellites track various areas so that we could note changes over years- the melting arctic, the melting Antarctic. Greenland which is substantial melting, and from that you see the movement of people that’s gonna have to take place and then what happens with that. ”
Professor Robert Reich spoke to approximately 5000 people in Sproul Plaza at the University of California Berkeley culminating a General Strike & Day of Action. The general assembly of ‘Occupy Cal’ voted earlier that evening to resume the tent occupation that had been torn down by the university police Wednesday night last week amidst videos of police brutality against students who had locked arms to defend the initial occupation. This video includes real time views of the plaza packed with demonstrators. 
