Tilting at windmills

By JIM OLDHAM

Published on November 20, 2009

This summer in Spain, I was impressed by the alternative energy landscape I found. In La Rioja, in the central north, where my wife's family live, complexes of solar panels share fields with crops while windmills stride the surrounding ridges, like the giants the knight of La Mancha battled. La Rioja has used renewable energy resources to become a net energy exporter; Spain is producing close to 30 percent of its energy from wind alone.

Here at home, getting government to act on global warming seems quixotic. Yet it is essential - the giants we face are real.

Whereas human civilization evolved in a world with 275 parts per million of CO2 in the air, in the last 200 years that level has jumped to 390 ppm. The result is climate change, with critical implications for life on earth: melting ice caps, desertification of important agricultural lands, increasing weather volatility, the spread of diseases and their vectors. A recent study, by Kofi Annan's Global Humanitarian Forum, calculates that climate change is currently responsible for 300,000 deaths each year. Scientists now warn that only by getting CO2 below 350 ppm can we hope to avoid "disastrous and irreversible climate impacts" (see 350.org).

Island nations such as the Maldives - as well as low lying countries and regions like Bangladesh, the Netherlands, and the Nile delta - risk destruction. Melting glaciers in the Himalayas put the water supply for 40 percent of the world's population at risk. Australia, much of Africa, southern Europe, and the U.S southwest all face long-term drought and desertification. Oceans are turning acid, threatening food chains by killing coral reefs and dissolving the shells of arctic molluscs.

Sadly, world and, especially, U.S. leaders are failing to act. Expectations for December's U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen have been lowered, with only broad political statements anticipated, because of developed (read polluting) nations' unwillingness to bring meaningful proposals to the table. Specific agreements on emissions targets, financing and technology transfer will be delayed until 2010. Although disappointing and dangerous, this delay does provide time to demand that Congress finally pass significant climate change legislation.

What can we do? We need to act, both individually and collectively, to do what we can locally and regionally while demanding more effective action by our representatives at the state and national level.

Individual action alone is not enough, nor can it excuse us, as citizens, from responsibility for our government's inaction. Nevertheless, grassroots efforts have value. In Britain, for example, a "10:10 campaign" is bringing together businesses, civic organizations, and individuals in a pledge to reduce carbon footprints by 10 percent in 2010. Such a campaign demonstrates popular will for action, takes a first step in carbon reduction, and builds understanding about the scope of change needed.

Local, regional and state governments provide other areas for action. Much can be done, through tax incentives, zoning and regulations, and coordinated planning, to reduce carbon emissions. Our Valley hosts the knowledge and skills necessary to improve regional transport, building practices, and municipal services in ways that could significantly reduce emissions. We lack, however, the shared public commitment necessary to implement change.

Some communities are addressing this is by becoming "transition towns" (see transitiontowns.org), to collectively determine, "for all those aspects of life that this community needs & to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of peak oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions?" Such a process builds the consensus needed to begin to impose on ourselves the lifestyle changes our world requires.

None of this is sufficient, however, without action at the federal level to cap (not trade, nor offset), tax and reduce carbon emissions nationally, and to join a binding international climate change treaty. Unfortunately, only a massive public demand, of the sort that brought civil rights legislation or the end of the Vietnam War, will make that happen. (See actforclimatejustice.org for ideas.) We have to decide: Do we have the will to save our planet?

Jim Oldham, Town Meeting member from Precinct 5, does environmental justice work in the U.S. and Latin America.