Responses to Combat Climate Change

The impending climate change, without major changes in behavior and green house gas emissions is daunting: nothing mankind has done so far has altered the relentless acceleration of our greenhouse gas emissions into our atmosphere and the attendant changes in climate and without change the situation is only going to get worse.

However, real changes can happen if we start making the right choices:

I. We can drastically cut our fossil fuel use, moving quickly from our 19th century energy economy to wiser technologies, both new and old, and choosing public policies that support energy frugality over waste. Beyond voluntary individual reductions, the NRDC recommends that we take the following actions:

• Implementation of a comprehensive cap and trade program with a gradually declining mandatory limit or “cap” on pollution.
• Immediate enactment of codes and standards that rid the marketplace of the worst-performing products and technologies that directly impact the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
• Establish performance-based incentives to drive investment in energy efficiency and clean energy solutions, funded through targeted use of the value from pollution permits or allowances.
• Create a sustained fund for targeted financing support to enable clean infrastructure investment.

II. We can transform our buildings from energy wasters to energy generators. From Yes! Magazine’s Guy Dauncey:

“This challenge involves two tasks: creating new buildings that are carbon neutral, and retrofitting existing buildings to eliminate their carbon footprint.

The first task is easier. In Germany, Passivhaus homes consume 95 percent less energy for heating and cooling by using super insulation, solar gain, and efficient heat recovery. There are 6,000 homes in Europe built to Passivhaus specifications. Building codes could require that all new houses are built to this standard.

There is no shortage of innovation. In Guangzhou, China, the 69-story high Pearl River Tower will generate more energy than it consumes, using wind turbines inside two floors of the building, solar photovoltaics (PV), and solar heated water. In Målmo, Sweden, the Turning Torso tower, in addition to being powered by local wind and solar energy, recycles organic wastes into biogas that can be used for cooking and to power the city’s buses. In the Chinese city of Rizhao, 99 percent of buildings in the city center use solar hot water. In Spain, all new buildings and renovations are required to get 30-70 percent of their hot water from solar panels.

The Architecture 2030 initiative is pressing to have all new buildings and major renovations in the United States be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, ¬a goal that has been unanimously approved by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Britain is moving faster, as—it is requiring that new buildings all be carbon neutral by 2016. The U.S.-based LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standard for green buildings needs to move in the same direction.

III. We can rethink and redesign our transportation system, going to an electric or other alternative fuel auto and bus fleet, better and more trains, bicycles, and actual walking. According to Dauncey, to lessen the demands of long distance shipping “we can rebuild our local economies to meet most of our needs and use innovative and alternative fueled trucks for what’s left. For ocean shipping, the answer may be augmented with wind-powered SkySails and hydrogen harvested on mid-ocean platforms from the sun, wind, and waves, and tides. Similar thought is going in to revitalizing the air transportation industry.

IV. We can rebuild our electric power grid to make long-distance electricity delivery economical and power it with solar, wind, geothermal, waves, tides, and rivers, and other non-fossil fuels, and we can stop using coal completely until some truly workable version of clean coal or sequestration is actually available.

Dauncey writes: “Solar energy, for example, offers an abundance of energy. Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation has calculated that each year, a square kilometer of hot desert receives solar energy equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of oil. Worldwide, this is several hundred times more energy than we need. Similarly, analysts who have evaluated the solar resources in the southwest United States found that concentrating solar power could provide nearly 7,000 gigawatts of capacity, seven times more than the current total U.S. electric capacity. (Concentrating solar power uses parabolic mirrors to focus solar energy to heat a gas or liquid.)

We can also gather solar electricity directly using photo-voltaics as many people are already doing in Germany, Japan, and California. We can gather energy from the win. North Dakota alone has enough wind energy for 33 percent of current U.S. demand for electricity. We can gather energy from the waves and tides, and from underground, where the potential store of geothermal energy in granite, six to 10 kilometers down, could power all U.S. needs for 20,000 years.

The numbers do add up, especially when you look at the full global potential of each technology. The challenge is to ramp up fast enough to make the transition in time. The numbers improve considerably when you consider that we could improve efficiencies throughout our economy by two to 10 times, using today’s technologies, and that the transition to electricity instead of liquid fuel for transport reduces the energy needed considerably.” The big challenge is to transform our existing energy paradigm to one that has the infrastructure necessary to be able to accommodate alternative energy sources.

IV. We can eat more healthily, for our bodies and our climate. Currently it takes 10 calories of fossil fuels to get one calorie of food to the American plate. Gasses from the stomachs of cows are significant greenhouse gasses, not to mention the immense water demands of raising beef. Eating less meat, more local foods, and more grains and vegetables would be much better for all and could dramatically reduce the emission of greenhouse gasess and help combat climate change.