Coal is most likely critical to maintaining a base load and to keeping the electricity grid flexible. However, there is no solution to be found in coal-related techniques. There are only expensive mistakes to be made there.

It will be extremely tempting to use coal, because there is so damn much of it. Think of coal as the crystal meth of energy. Easy to get, easy to make, feels great for a while, and the aftermath is very inconvenient.

For your consideration: Greenpeace’s report about this greenwashing-in-progress.

In a certain sense, this is a no-brainer: of course the king corporation of genetic modification would be interested in genetic techniques for making crops which are able to resist drought and other climate-change-related maladies (saline soil, for instance). The company has done an impressive job getting many farmers hooked on strains of crops resistant to Roundup (coincidentally, another Monsanto product), as well as many other kinds of plants, and this step into a hotter world is a small extension of that.
The interesting thing here, however, is that Monsanto is trying to position itself as a “winner”, even if all hell breaks loose via global warming. In other words, a hotter world will have winners and losers, and Monsanto very much wants to be a winner, and potentially a big winner. (Along with, oh, energy and security companies.)
We seem to need to leave behind the idea that global warming is an unmitigated disaster for all people. For some so-called “people”, also called “corporations”, global warming may be just what the doctor ordered.

most of the melted water will stay in the Atlantic for at least 50 years, where sea levels will rise much faster as a result. Only small amounts will make it into the Pacific Ocean in that time.

This simulation suggests that the flood risk in places like New York, Miami, and Atlantic City (in the US) and Lagos, Abidjan, and Casablanca (on the west coast of Africa) is quite a bit higher than we might have thought.

The meltwater is predicted to move in a “slow wave” around the globe, and isn’t supposed to cause major havoc in the Pacific or Indian Oceans until, oh, the end of the century.

[W]e’ve got the equivalent, not of the six and a half billion people we can’t support now but the equivalent of 72 billion people who we won’t be able to support even faster.

America and the rest of the so-called “first world” (Western Europe, Japan, Australia) have produced the consumption template which many other people around the world are trying to use. India, Brazil, China, Russia, Argentina, Vietnam, the entire Middle East, Nigeria, and so on, have images in their heads and on their buildings of success, happiness, and a worthy life, and all of it has to do with using more stuff.

One wonders what it would take to internalize and act on these facts on large scale, rather than individually and occasionally. Is there something which could actually create adequate counter-force to the inertia of creeping worldwide consumerism? That exercise is left for the reader.

One approach currently seems to be: Find a distinct entity having measurable damages plausibly caused by global warming, and then have that entity sue the largest carbon-emitting or carbon-selling companies for those exact measurable effects. That’s the approach of the 400 Inupiat villagers of Kivalina, Alaska, whose village will be washed away soon since its ice protection is all gone. With the help of Stephen Sussman (ironically, a lawyer for Philip Morris during the medicaid-cost-recovery lawsuits of the last 15 years), they are suing a bucket of oil, gas, and electric companies for recovery of the costs necessary to move their village. He calls it a “nuisance case.” Amy Goodman of Democracy Now discussed it with him on Thursday, July 3, 2008.

Conspiracy to deceive is part of this particular lawsuit. In other words, this bucket of companies is charged with misleading the public in general, through funding organizations which have obscured reality. I’m not sure how this helps the nuisance lawsuit, but something similar helped the states when suing tobacco companies, so maybe it helps.

We have to decide, however, how or why it is fair to go after oil, gas, and electric companies. We have to remember, at all times, that we, each of us, are buying the gasoline, using the electricity, and consuming the products fired by fossil fuels. The companies will argue, with some plausibility, that they were and are filling an ever-growing demand for energy, and that individual purchasers share responsibility for the effects of that purchase.

Maybe this is where the “conspiracy to deceive” comes in. If you deceive the consumers of your products about consumption’s effects, then the consumers are (plausibly) less responsible for those effects.

I urge readers with some legal expertise to chime in on this one.

1. Here in the south-west Pennsylvania area where Climeshift finds its home, we’ve had extremely high temperatures over the last week. Monday and Tuesday were all-time highs… by more than 2 degrees. And the local papers manage to highlight it by discussing… potholes.
2. Democracy Now stated this morning that the Sunday gab-fest-talk-shows contained exactly three questions for candidates about global warming during 2007. Out of more than 2000 questions.

With a media like that, who needs a forgetful public?

All I can say is, start figuring out what people will want when the warming hits badly, because you’re going to make a ton of money. People are not being prepared by the media for what will happen, and the candidates are not being encouraged to care.

One bit of good news is the appearance of the “Bali Communique” — a document signed by 150 companies. These companies say they want legally binding targets, targets set by science, and emphasis on industrialized companies lowering their emissions. I agree with all of those things, and we’ll try to sort out in the weeks to come how much of this is greenwashing and, related, how much is simply a license to keep moving industrial production to the non-completely-industrialized world.

Another bit of good news is that drought-parched Australia has figured out that it better participate in this whole dance. The new Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, got Kyoto signed right away. So who hasn’t signed now? One guess. India and China signed Kyoto without any responsibilities, however, keep in mind — they’re not part of “Annex I”, in Kyoto-speak.
That all ultimately doesn’t matter, because Kyoto itself is both flawed and puny. The aim is to create an agreement on a “process” for or “road map” to an agreement, itself to be finalized in 2009. The work product will be a PROCESS, people. Be afraid, be very afraid.

No, this isn’t a word for how Godzilla eats locations like herbivores eat herbs and omnivores eat dilemmas. Locavores eat close to home — they eat locally-grown produce, join local CSAs, visit farmer’s markets, garden, and may actually know the farmers who made their food.

I really like this choice. Why do I mention it in a global warming blog posting? Because, in my view, eating close to home has an ideal dual relationship to global warming:

• It is the one best thing you can do to lower your carbon footprint
• It is one essential thing you’ll need to learn how to do if or when gloabl warming gets out of control

The amount of fossil fuel involved in eating mass-produced food (fertilizer, farming, packaging, and transport) is ridiculous, and the entire enterprise rests upon a system which does not price the true cost of burning carbon into its price. Fair enough — to avoid that system, you eat local — minimize the packaging, minimize the fertilizer, minimize the transport.

Let’s say that the true cost of carbon gets priced into the food. What will happen? Food prices will go waaaaay up. Or, let’s say global warming gets out of control, entire areas of the world become unsuitable for wide scale farming, and food gets scarcer. What then? Better learn what grows close to you, and better learn who knows how to do it!

That’s the double-win of being a locavore.

This, I believe, is the bind the anti-coal forces will frequently be put into. Coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants are extremely well-understood, as far as their engineering and electrical characteristics go. Solar, wind, and other renewables are not as well understood, and currently companies don’t want to try. Hence, if a company wants to avoid coal or natural gas (another carbon-negative electricity-generating substance), they will immediately look to nuclear.

And since coal is so cheap, comparatively, and since there are no nuclear-weapons-related issues surrounding coal, electricity politics are going to get increasingly tricky.

For instance, The Economist has a piece called Cleaning Up. In it, they outline several growth opportunities for climate entrepreneurs and opportunists:

• Energy R&D in general. Energy companies invest very little, compared to consumer companies (the article uses the example of Pet Food), and they need to invest more in the many possible technologies
• Fuel cells
• Cellulosic Ethanol
• Equipment replacement, as utilities move towards cleaner techniques and carbon capture
• Advising funds on cleaner investments
• Carbon trading

Yeah, it is a boring list. But at least the investment industry is mulling these things over in small ways.