David: cc (added) list
I hope I am not doing something you would wish otherwise - but I am
assuming you inadvertently hit "reply" vs "reply all". As I agree with most of
what you say below, I will add only a little as I think your explanations
could be important to the understanding of others to this thread. Especially
those not in the US and Canada.
On Sep 20, 2014, at 10:36 AM, David Lewis <[email protected]> wrote:
> The male voice was a representative of the Fraser Institute, which is based
> in Vancouver BC. I once told them (in public, at an environment conference
> in Vancouver) what they do can be compared to what Goebbels did in Germany,
> only given that the entire planet is at stake, in my mind, their crime is
> worse.
[RWL: This guy's views were unbelievable - said with a straight face.
He seems to have worked for many of the denier organizations - not just Fraser.
>
> I'm not saying the NYC event organizers "have no interest in carbon". I'm
> saying they are stating that the solution to the climate problem is
> "renewables", as opposed to saying that the solution is to deploy low carbon
> technologies. This is not a subtle difference. Advocates of 100% renewables
> support shutting down low carbon existing nuclear facilities and they tend to
> support bans on nuclear research of all types even to the extent of opposing
> fusion. They also do what they can to discourage carbon capture. I'm not
> familiar with what McKibben is currently saying, so I should have restricted
> my comment to what Klein is saying. She is a featured speaker at the NYC
> event and she is a board member of 350.org.
[RWL: I agree totally with you. Carbon and CDR are not getting the
attention they deserve (but maybe we will be proven wrong tomorrow and the next
few days).
>
> The Klein line is that some Stanford study by Mark Jacobsen states that 100%
> renewables are "in our grasp", full stop, nothing else is required. Each
> dollar put into anything else, i.e. fossil fuel production expansion, nuclear
> power, or carbon capture is one dollar that isn't going into investment in
> more renewables. She describes the environment movement in Germany as being
> "perhaps the strongest environment movement in the world and in particular a
> very strong anti nuclear movement", i.e. anti nuclear is pro climate action,
> which is what I question. How does shutting down very low carbon power
> generation help in a quest to lower carbon emissions? In discussion about
> the German energy transformation she lauds the increase in solar there, and
> deplores the expansion of coal power, saying the expansion of coal is due to
> politicians who aren't doing the right thing. She is silent on the issue of
> does German continued and expanding coal use have anything to do with its
> decision to phase out nuclear.
[RWL: Again I mostly agree. I once sent something to Prof. Jacobson
- but never heard back. Unlike most future 100% RE scenarios, his contains 0%
biomass - so little CDR possible. You and I probably disagree about nuclear,
whose costs seem likely to never drop in the future as fast as are the RE
prices dropping. Nuclear seems to be competing recently only with big
subsidies.
>
>
> During the interview, when Obama's name comes up, Amy Goodman plays an
> excerpt from a speech given by Obama at Cushing Oklahoma, a major storage and
> distribution center for fossil fuels where Obama expresses support for the
> dramatic expansion of US fossil fuel production. No favorable comments about
> any aspect of anything Obama has done are made. Klein later on describes the
> leaders who are meeting in NY this week in this way: "we don't have climate
> leaders gathering at the UN, we have climate failures". She then describes
> the leader of her own country Canada without distinguishing him in any way
> from any of the other "climate failures" as a "climate criminal". At one
> point in the interview the person Goodman brought in to help her with the
> interview characterizes what Klein thinks about the big "slick" green NGO
> groups by saying Klein wrote about "the Wildlife Conservation Society and
> others actually being involved in helping to promote exploitation under the
> guise of environmental enlightenment", and Klein states this was one of the
> most disturbing things she discovered while writing her book.
[RWL: Again I mostly agree. Re the last part, the issue seems in
dispute on whether the environmental group had to allow fracking, as they
received a donation of land. Did they have legal requirement to allow drilling
on supposedly conservation land. They certainly came out looking bad, but I
am too far away to know the issues.
>
>
> Contrast Klein's dismissal of the entire Obama policy on climate as Obama is
> just another of the "climate failures" and her implication that he is
> actually a "climate criminal" with the views on Obama expressed by Al Gore
> who is also in NYC this week who was interviewed by Chris Mooney on Inquiring
> Minds.
[RWL: Again agree. I wish Obama had done more (John Holdren
apparently gave very recent tough responses in a US House Committee hearing).
My sense is that Obama is going to get tougher in his last two years, so maybe
Naomi's and similar words will/should get some credit. That surely is her
intent.
Again apologies for adding the list back in to our discussion, but I
think many on the list will appreciate your above continued explanation of the
AG-NK exchange - especially in light of the big news we may hear tomorrow.
Sone of the reporting will certainly involve the names you have cited above.
Ron
>
> David
>
>
>
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