Anti-coal activists need to use resource depletion arguments to their advantage.
Is LJ just messing up, or have all the posts since April 6th disappeared?
The Climate/Peak Oil Divide
Last Friday I was on a radio program called Terra Verde with Tom Stokes from the Climate Crisis Coalition to discuss whether or not there was a divide between the movements of people focused on climate change and those focused on peak oil or peak resources in general.
Both Tom and I quickly rejected the notion, though perhaps for different reasons. From my perspective, any sort of tension would require some kind of equal status. The sad truth is that--as far as movements go--one clearly swamps the other (though neither has yet crossed the threshold from early majority to late majority, which means that both camps still have a lot of work to do). Of 100 people who are concerned about climate change, maybe one of them understands peak oil. And I think that generally extends to the activists.
Now, some peak oilers do dismiss concerns about global warming because they believe we'll run out of oil before the worst case scenarios can come to fruition. I know people who feel this way. On the other side, I know even more climate change activists who either ignore peak oil because--to be blunt--they're in denial, or because they fear that acceptance of it will diminish our collective sense of urgency to mitigate climate impacts. And that is despite the position of James Hansen, to whom many climate activists otherwise regularly turn.
...
Everywhere you look--including in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--cheap coal is assumed to be available for hundreds of years.
What if they're wrong? Would the government still invest billions upon billions on "clean coal?"
Post Carbon Institute's Senior Fellow, Richard Heinberg, has completed a book called Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis (to be published in June 2009 and serialized in his Museletter) that blows a hole in the conventional wisdom. The climate activist community should jump all over his findings as a major weapon in the arsenal against a coal-fueled future.
For those in the climate movement (of whom I count myself as one) who read this post, consider this an invitation to work together.
The Climate/Peak Oil Divide
Last Friday I was on a radio program called Terra Verde with Tom Stokes from the Climate Crisis Coalition to discuss whether or not there was a divide between the movements of people focused on climate change and those focused on peak oil or peak resources in general.
Both Tom and I quickly rejected the notion, though perhaps for different reasons. From my perspective, any sort of tension would require some kind of equal status. The sad truth is that--as far as movements go--one clearly swamps the other (though neither has yet crossed the threshold from early majority to late majority, which means that both camps still have a lot of work to do). Of 100 people who are concerned about climate change, maybe one of them understands peak oil. And I think that generally extends to the activists.
Now, some peak oilers do dismiss concerns about global warming because they believe we'll run out of oil before the worst case scenarios can come to fruition. I know people who feel this way. On the other side, I know even more climate change activists who either ignore peak oil because--to be blunt--they're in denial, or because they fear that acceptance of it will diminish our collective sense of urgency to mitigate climate impacts. And that is despite the position of James Hansen, to whom many climate activists otherwise regularly turn.
...
Everywhere you look--including in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--cheap coal is assumed to be available for hundreds of years.
What if they're wrong? Would the government still invest billions upon billions on "clean coal?"
Post Carbon Institute's Senior Fellow, Richard Heinberg, has completed a book called Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis (to be published in June 2009 and serialized in his Museletter) that blows a hole in the conventional wisdom. The climate activist community should jump all over his findings as a major weapon in the arsenal against a coal-fueled future.
For those in the climate movement (of whom I count myself as one) who read this post, consider this an invitation to work together.