Another example of the persistent democratic narrative of framing responses to the pending climate disaster as business opportunities:

‘Mr. Kerry said the market for renewable energy sources and other types of clean energy would “explode” if the right deal was struck in Paris. Repeating a theme he has used recently, he said the energy transformation would be “business-driven,” combined with “consumer demand and voter demand.”’
Source: John Kerry Says He Would Explain Solution to Climate Change as a Market Issue – NYTimes.com

‘A new version was released of the international agreement that negotiators at the Paris climate conference have been haggling over for more than a week.’

Source: A New Draft Agreement for Paris Climate Negotiators – The New York Times

Dec 9, 2015, COP21 Paris

At a COP21 press conference Secretary of State John Kerry just announced that the United States would double grant based commitments by 2020.

‘The United States is committing to double our grant based commitments by 2020.’ ~ Secretary of State John Kerry

“Here in Paris we have the rarest of opportunities – to save the world” ~ John Kerry

Report by James George

Dec. 8, 2015, COP21, Paris

Former Vice President Al Gore brought COP21 delegates and others to their feet in standing ovation with the impassioned close to his address. Gore’s presentation featured slides and video of recent climate related extreme weather events and distressing situations from all across the world, such as the flooding in Chennai, India. There talk featured inspirational images as well, such as the well known picture of the earth from space and mass demonstrations for climate change action.

Excerpt

“The best chance to address this climate crisis is here, now. We have a few days left. Whatever delegation you are following or are a part of use these next 72 hours to double down on your commitment to do the right thing. There are people who have been to previous conferences, and they look back on the long string of them and they’re tempted to conclude, it’s not going to make any difference.”

“I want them [future generations] to look back at us here in this place, in this hour, on this day, and ask, how did you find the moral courage to break through the impasses, to rise above the differences, to see beyond the difficulties, across them to the bright future that was possible, and see the larger moral question that was at stake.” ~ Al Gore

“Every great moral cause that humanity has been faced with was met with a series of ‘no’s and fierce resistance: the abolition movement, the struggle for woman’s suffrage and gender equity which is ongoing, the struggle for civil rights, the struggle against apartheid, the struggle for the end of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. All of these moral causes have met ‘no’s and fierce opposition, but they all eventually came down to a single choice, between one of two options, what is right and what is wrong.”

“In this case, what is right is to save the future of our planet and to say to future generations that we’ve done the right thing here. Make no mistake, the next generation will inherit the earth we bequeath to them, and depending on their circumstances they will ask one of two questions.”

“If they live in a world in which we have not addressed this crisis, in which we have not taken advantage of the opportunities to create jobs with renewables and sustainable agriculture and fishing and forestry and more efficiency. If they suffer even worse floods and mudslides and droughts and the spreading of diseases into regions where they were unknown previously, the melting of the ice, and the sea level rise and the flows of millions of climate refugees. If they live in such a world, they would be justified in looking back at us, this group of us gathered here in Paris in December of 2015 and asking, ‘What were you thinking? Why did you not act?’”

“But if they live in a world where there is a renewal of hope, where there are millions of jobs being created, where the carbon concentrations and greenhouse gas concentrations are declining, and where people are living and flourishing, communities with renewable systems and sustainable economies. And if they look at their own children and feel secure in saying to them, you’re world is going to be even better.”

“I want them to look back at us here in this place, in this hour, on this day, and ask - how did you find the moral courage to break through the impasses, to rise above the differences, to see beyond the difficulties, across them to the bright future that was possible, and see the larger moral question that was at stake.”

“How did you do it? And part of the answer will be that the men and women who came here to Paris from 195 countries all around the world, came together in support of a higher purpose – to protect our home, to protect our planet earth. We will say to them in answer, we found out that political will was itself a renewable resource.”

“Thank you very much, Merci Beaucoup.”

Report by James George

Dec. 7, 2015, Paris

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke at a press conference inside COP21 in Paris. Here’s a few excerpts where he speaks about the INDCs (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) and the need to reach an agreement by the end of the conference Friday.

“The national climate plans are a welcome start but they fall short of our goal to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius. We much go much farther and much faster. That is why we need action now here in Paris. We cannot afford half measures or delay. We have less than just four days of negotiations left. Some tough issue still remain.”

“A political momentum like this may not come again. I urge ministers and negotiators gathered here not to squander it. I’m confident that Paris can be a turning point, a decisive turning point in our history to a cleaner healthier more sustainable and prosperous future.” ~ United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

Report by James George

Dec. 7, 2015 Paris

While demonstrations at COP21 have been largely subdued after the mass rally was cancelled due to terror concerns, a few actions pop up here and there.  Here demonstrators call for a 1.5 C warming limit and for rich countries to  contribute more.

Dec 7, 2015, COP21, Paris

California Governor Brown participated in a panel discussion in Paris led by Greg Dalton of ClimateOne and  also including co-panelist Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf - both part the large California contingent inside COP21 during the talks. Brown spoke in favor or green development and a carbon tax as important steps to avoid the far greater expense of a climate calamity.

“We gotta do something about climate change or that’ll be trillions in costs to the world. So it’s cheaper, whatever the cost benefit says. If we go past a tipping point and things really get screwed up, it is going to be expensive. So whatever we’re doing to prevent that calamity is a cost effective move, cause you’re not comparing it with doing nothing, you’re comparing it with do nothing and disaster happens and that’s expensive, versus investing in solar, in electric vehicles, in energy efficient buildings, a carbon tax and all the rest. And even the carbon tax, what it does is, it burdens carbon intensive industries, and that’s what you want…” ~ Governor Brown

Report by James George

Dec 5, 2015 Paris.

Bill McKibben of 350.org appeared along with Mark Jacobson, James Balog, Neil Leary, Jacob Scherr, and John Adams at a youth climate activist event called Climate Action – Engaging the Next Generation.

Partial Transcript
“You know, we planned last weekend to have an enormous march in Paris. We though it would be as big as the one in New York last September, and my colleagues all of them young had worked for six or eight months had moved over here to France, we had people from hundreds of different groups, everybody lined up but of course that went by the board.”

“The beautiful thing that happened immediately was that we sent out word all around the planet saying, look, we can’t march in Paris, we need people marching everywhere else. There were 2200 marches and things around the world last weekend and they were astonishing to see..”

“… they were amazing, big marches, thousands of people in just the most unlikely places, in Malawi, in Ghana, and huge turnout down under… Across Europe of course, but also happily very big in Asia, in many places that we’ve really been working hard, all of us, all the different groups to kind of establish a foothold - places like Nepal, places like India.”

“In fact there was a very moving picture of people in Chennai demonstrating, and in the six days since, Chennai has had the biggest rainfall ever measured in that part of the world. There’s now hundreds of dead people there, the city’s been cut off. A city of eight million basically cut off, an island.”

“The point I’m trying to make is that now there’s the big movement out there, and what it’s been engaged by are a series of fights. That’s how people have become… – the trouble with climate change always is it seems so big and we seem so small against it. What could we do, what could matter, what could happen?”

“And the trick of building this movement over the last five or six years has been to convince people that there’s enough of us that when we concentrate our power on particular things, we can make a difference.”
“So in the states, you know, the key fight, oddly, has been this fight over this pipelines down out of the tar sands of Canada that somehow turned into an emblematic battle that rallied people as things hadn’t before. And as a result, you know, pleasantly for the moment, we’ve beaten that pipeline. More to the point, as the leader of the American Natural Gas Association said to his colleagues in a speech a few weeks ago, he said, we somehow have to stop the keystonization of projects…”
“Everyplace people are, people are fighting – there’s people are going to jail today in Boston fighting pipelines there. In place after place, all over the world. We think we’ve beaten plans for the biggest coal mine in the world in Australia. France here has banned fracking, which is I think in many way a direct outgrowth of the work that [?] and so many others did in New York State to take this issue and make it absolutely central.”

Report by James George

Dec 5, 2015. Paris

Mark Jacobson, professor at Stanford in California, appeared alongside several other panelists including Bill McKibben at an event called ‘Climate Action – Engaging the Next Generation.’

Jacobson explained several aspects of his 100% renewable energy plan in record time, underlining a few key points along the way, such as the stability of the grid with load offsetting, and the dynamics of black carbon and other pollutants on global warming and health.

Partial Transcription (rushed, not perfect)

“We’ve been developing energy plans to transition states and countries to 100% clean renewable energy. By clean and renewable that’s wind and water and solar power. It does not mean biofuels, it does not mean nuclear power, it does not mean natural gas, nor coal with carbon capture. It’s simply clean and renewable energy, because we’re trying to address air pollution and climate and energy security simultaneously, and the only way you can do all of these together is by eliminating sources of combustion altogether and electrifying everything. So this is the idea is to electrify the world to all purposes. So all purposes means electricity, transportation, heating and cooling, industry, agriculture, forestry, fishing.”

Mark Jacobson

“And so we developed plans not only for the 50 United States now, but just recently for 139 countries of the world …those were built starting last week. I’ll tell you a little bit about them. The other thing that was released, we also realized the grid has to be stable, if you have intermittent wind and solar in a large portion of it.”

“But it turns out that when you actually electrify everything it actually makes it easier to stabilize the grid because you have more what are called flexible loads. Like transportation, you don’t have to wire a wind turbine to your car to drive it around, because it has batteries inside. So you can actually provide the power to your car at different times of the day so you can control when the car gets powered, and the utility can give incentives for people to charge for example at night. This is called a flexible load as opposed to an inflexible load. Like when you turn the lights on you need the electricity right away.”

“But there are a lot of loads, across the grid, especially heating and cooling, transportation, and in industry as well, where you can control when people get there power. It turns out it makes it a lot easier to match power demand. So we just did a study after doing the fifty state plans where we looked at transitioning each of the 50 states to 100% wind water and solar. We did a grid integration study – could we keep the grid stable with those 100% plans. We found is ya, without any loss of load, over six years period every 30 seconds we found over the entire United States, we could keep the entire grid stable.”

“So, that’s the number one criticism that people who have been against wind and solar and intermittent energy sources have said that you just can’t keep the lights on, it’s going to be way expensive, you need all this peaking power, you need gas for providing peaking. But it turns out you don’t, you do not need natural gas at all for peaking power, let alone base load power. It’s because you other types of low cost storage.”

“You don’t even need batteries it turns out for stationary storage. You need ’em in cars, electric cars, but not for stationary storage. So the types of storage we looked at that were low cost, whether it’s heat, for heating, there’s like in water and soil and rocks, and basically in ice too for cooling. For electricity, these types of storage are existing, not growing, but existing hydroelectric power, pumped hydroelectric power, existing plus proposed, pumped hydroelectric power, and concentrated solar power with phase change material.”

“It turned out we were able to stabilize the grid with just those types of storage without any stationary batteries.”

Examples:

Drake Landing – seasonal heat storage. 52 homes, with solar rooftop system, glycol solution, pass the heat into water, move through bore holes  to30 meters under ground, rocks heated to 80C, and stored for winter.

Stanford University. Gas heating plant bulldozed, replaced with 2 boilers and a chillers heat exchange system, and an elaborate pipe system.

“So we’ve developed these plans for 139 countries and the fifty states to go to 100% renewable energy. If I were to list, well why would we want to do this? Aside from eliminating global warming… and by the way this would be a transition of 80% conversion by 2030 and 100% by 2050.”

“My main work is computer modeling, I build climate models, to simulate climate, air pollution, and weather, and you know probably the biggest thing I ever found was that black carbon was the second leading cause of global warming after carbon dioxide. So I look a lot at the effects of particles on climate. And one way to actually address global warming and climate change is to control selective pollutants, like black carbon, because it has, it’s like a million times more powerful per unit mass than carbon dioxide, but there’s a lot less of it in the atmosphere, and there’s a much shorter lifetime, only a few weeks. But it is the second leading cause, like carbon dioxide causes about 42% of global warming and black carbon is about 20%, and methane is about 15-16%, and then there’s nitrous oxide and oxone and clorofluorocarbons…”

“Because black carbon is a particle, and particles kill worldwide from air pollution, kill 4 to7 million people worldwide, each year, including about 60-65,000 in the United States at a cost to the US of about 3% of the GDP for the mortalities and morbidities. So this is, on a worldwide scale it’s estimated that, well today it’s on the order of 15-25 trillion dollars per year in health costs from the 4 to 7 million people plus the millions more that are killed to do air pollution, and that’s going to be equivalent in 2050, the climate impacts will also be around 20 trillion dollars per year. So there’s 50 trillion dollars per year in health plus climate costs. But we’d eliminate those costs.”

“My point about the black carbon was, the only way you can actually save the arctic ice is by eliminating black carbon emissions. Because if we stop the CO2 today, which we have to do, to stop catastrophic warming, it’s still not going to save the ice. But black carbon, because of it’s short lifetime and its strong impacts on climate, you can, and you also reduce health problems simultaneously, so there’s a double benefit. So you can do that kind of accounting, but the key is you have to eliminate all combustion so that means eliminating all sources of not only black carbon and carbon dioxide, but there are also cooling particles, air pollution particles that mask half of global warming that’s occuring.”

“So even though greenhouse gases plus black carbon causes this much warming, the net observed warming is this, and the difference is air pollution particles that cause cooling, such as sulfates and nitrates that mask or offset half of global warming. And so if you actually just cleaned up air pollution particles you’d actually see a rise in the observed warming which is quite scary. So you want to clean up the particles because the cause 90% of the health problems due to air pollution, but doing that will double global warming actually, immediately. And this is a scary problem. So the only solution is to eliminate all the particles and greenhouse gasses simultaneously and that’s what we’re planning on trying to do…”

to be continued…

Mark Jacobson was recently freatured on BNN Television Canada on 139 country plans and 31 minutes into this nuclear versus renewables debate on NPR

Report by James George

Dec 4, 2015, Paris

Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland California spoke at COP21 alongside other panelists including green philanthropist Tom Steyer, Diane Holdorf, Kellogg’s chief sustainability officer, and Gary Demasi, Data Center Energy & Location Strategy at Google.

As has become the custom among politicians,  climate change actions we’re primarily framed as wise economic choices, “Climate action can save you money” she said.

There were also progressive messages in her statement, as she highlighted a partnership with Rising Sun which engages in job training for low income people and for those returning from prison. She also mentioned Oakland’s ‘social justice’ and ‘equity goals’ and issues of consumptive emissions.

“And as far as partnerships go, we are very focused in Oakland on marrying our climate change goals with our social justice and equity goals.” ~ Libby Schaaf

Selected Excerpts:

“Cities are producing 70% of the energy related carbon emissions in the planet so we clearly are playing an important role if we are going to make tangible changes.”

“I’m proud to say that Oakland just in the last 10 years has reduced our core emissions by 10%, and more importantly, our consumption emissions by 15%. We also think its important that both governments and companies not just measure the emissions that come from that actual location, but also think about the emissions that are caused from any part of the planet when you are consuming goods within your boundaries.”

“And as far as partnerships go, we are very focused in Oakland on marrying our climate change goals with our social justice and equity goals. And that’s where partnerships have truly been powerful for us.”

“We have entered into several partnerships including with the California Youth Employment Partnership as well as a great organization called Rising Sun to do job training. And to do job training in low income communities of color, so that we can actually educate people in communities that don’t always find out about energy efficiency improvements, and these can be citizens that go out in the communities that they grew up in and help home owners, apartment dwellers reap the benefits of energy efficiency which not only can help save them money on their monthly energy bills, but also help save the planet as well, as well as provide great jobs for a growing sector. And finally Rising Sun specifically works on our community members who are returning from prison to give them a great skill and a great entry back into our society.”

Report by James George