A 6-Step Program for Climate Sanity

OK, I’ll admit, I’m a climate panic snark. Perhaps it goes back to my days as a Brand Architect for a leading solar company. Back then we worked really hard to develop products and messages that resonated with the new energy reality: the idea that there were cleaner and better energy alternatives out there. Over time those energy alternatives became cheaper as well, and now compete with or beat traditional energy systems in certain regions. It made good, clean and — above all — SANE, sense, and it worked. We installed a helluva lot of solar, and took pride in it.

I have no idea what happened since then.

At some point the narrative changed, and climate panic became the norm. We turned up the volume and started screaming and labeling and ostracizing and blaming and finger-pointing and gasping-in-awe-at-why-don’t-they-listen-to-us-anymore?

I don’t have the answers to all of that, of course, but I would like to offer some ideas about how we might be able to redirect our climate future. Let’s call it the 6-Step Program for Climate Rehab, shall we?

1. Stop the Panic.

Fine, I know this is easier said than done. But how is climate panic — or panic about anything, for that matter — going to help us? Lighting our hair on fire and running around the world screaming isn’t working. It’s just human nature to tune people out when the volume gets too loud.

I get it. If you’re a true believer, you’re frustrated that more action hasn’t been taken and that no one is acting quickly enough. But yelling isn’t working. Telling people in Iowa that the Himalayas-are-melting-and-you-should-really-care-more-than-your-kid’s-college isn’t working. The louder you yell, the less people listen. Is it climate denial? Call it whatever you want. Maybe it’s just like the Boy Who Cried Wolf: scream it enough times and people will stop responding. At this point it’s just noise. And most people don’t want the noise.

Another thought: the people you’re panicking most are children. We had to invent the term eco-anxiety to figure out how to deal with it. Don’t romanticize it and call it activism and hero-worship them on magazine covers. They’re not heroes, they’re scared children, and adults did that to them. Stop it already.

Isn’t it time for a rational discussion?

2. Climate Science Transparency.

Read any good Climate Science lately? Me either. Well, I’ve read some — more than many, less than others — but it’s not an easy task. I genuinely want to learn what’s real and what’s not, so I’ve gone searching for the science. But it’s not easy. Finding it is not easy, and usually what I find instead are other publications interpreting the science and telling me how and what to think.

I would bet that most of you get your climate science information not from the science itself but rather from the various media outlets you read. Which means you’re reading someone else’s opinion about the climate, which also means you’re absorbing their bias.

When we wanted to impeach a President about a foreign policy phone call, we spent months and millions in public forums, poring over every single detail. We fed the 24/7 news cycle with this information. You couldn’t get away from it, even when you tried. Why did this happen? Because someone decided that this information was valuable.

Why haven’t we done this with climate science? We’re being asked to spend trillions to solve a problem not everyone understands or accepts. I know this idea frustrates many of you who’ve been wanting action for 30 years, but not everyone shares your understanding or zeal. Let’s face it: people in Indiana think differently than people in California, and have different priorities. But if it’s that important, why don’t we have more transparency of the information?

I want us to spend 6 months with climate scientists in front of House/Senate panels discussing climate science, having them questioned by both sides of the aisle, and have that broadcast 24/7 across C-SPAN for the public to view.

I want climate science a matter of the public record, not hidden in international forum meeting minutes and interpreted by media and politicians with agendas. We’re being asked to spend trillions, folks, we should all have a chance to understand and accept the problem equally. We did it for a partisan impeachment, why wouldn’t we do it for a supposedly non-partisan issue like climate change?

3. Normalize the Climate Math.

Here’s a quick energy quiz: which is the cheapest form of electricity?

(Tick tock…crickets chirping…)

The answer? All of them! Sorry, it was a trick question, meant to illustrate a point.

If you ask an oil man this question, he’ll answer “oil!” If you ask a solar person, they’ll say “solar of course”. Ask a nuclear engineer, they’ll say “nuclear energy rules!”

The thing is, they’re all right. And they’re all wrong. The real answer to this question is: it depends.

Different energy sources have different values depending on their location; it’s just the nature of the energy business. A solar farm in California has different economics than one in North Dakota; a coal plant in Kentucky has different economics than one in Texas. Different areas have different economics, and different prices.

But that’s not what I mean by normalizing the energy math. What I mean is that we need to normalize how we compare energy alternatives and their effects on the climate. Example?

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently released a report highlighting the massive fossil fuel subsidies the industry has received. The problem was they changed the definition of subsidy to meet their narrative: they took all of the air pollution costs and lumped them together and called them subsidies. While external costs like pollution should rightfully be attributed to their sources, they are not subsidies, so including them as such taints the math. Suddenly it looks much more ominous than it did before, and it fits an agenda rather an independent analysis.

My point is this: we need to calculate the costs for different alternatives in the same way, so it’s an even comparison. If you lump all air pollution costs into a fossil fuel bucket, then you also have to include air pollution costs in the production, operation, maintenance and decommissioning of renewable energy projects. If you penalize one energy source for something, you have to penalize every energy source for that same something.

If we don’t normalize the math, we get 7 + slingshots = purple. And then we all scramble to figure out if purple is better than chartreuse.

We need to change that. We need to have even comparisons so we know the real alternatives and make smart decisions.

4. I’m not the enemy.

Neither are you.

Let’s face another harsh climate reality: it’s going to cost us lots of money to fix it. More money than the Democrats have. And more money than the Republicans have. Or rather, Democrats will spend a lot more on it when they’re in power, and the Republicans will spend a lot less on it when they’re in power. And so the pendulum goes, and so goes our commitment to battling climate change. We double down today, then pull our chips off the table tomorrow. What a waste.

Full disclosure: I’m a Republican. But so what? I worked in solar energy for 20 years alongside Democrats, and we did great work together. We had a common cause, we lobbied politicians together, we united to solve common problems for our common good. Whatever political differences we had, they rarely came up because we were working together to solve important problems. It truly didn’t matter; we had mutual respect.

Deniers, Climate Science Deniers, non-believers, hysterics, Alarmists, Tree-Huggers. Ugh. It’s exhausting, hating this much. We don’t even know what to call people anymore. Are you a Jedi or a Sith?

I believe in climate change, that mankind has influenced it, and that it’s an important problem that needs solving. I suspect most of us agree on that. But if we don’t agree on all of it, so what?

We’re not enemies. There is common ground to be found here, so let’s work towards that.

5. Greed can be Green.

Greed is good. Remember when Gordon Gecko, the slick-haired huckster, said that in the movie Wall Street? Many cringed. His point? Selfishness will direct people’s energies towards making money, which grows businesses, creates employment, creates opportunities, and can cause a tremendous amount of good in the process.

We in solar figured that out years ago. Before subsidies and rebates and other financial incentives came into play, solar was relegated to boats and cabins in the woods. Then financial engineering concepts like Power Purchase Agreements, Investment Tax Credits, and others were designed and showed companies how they could make money; many of you reading this invented those concepts. Once people figured out how to profit it from it there’s been double-digit worldwide growth since then.

There wasn’t green until there was GR$$N.

Is it greed? Call it whatever you want, it built the solar industry into what it is today.

I know it’s popular to hate corporations who make profits. People say Big Oil, or Big Nukes, or IOUs, or whomever. THEY are the problem, aren’t they?

But what if they weren’t? What if they were part of the solution? If we collectively figured out how to make money at solving climate change, then selfish profit-making interests would go towards solving our most pressing problems. Imagine all those international resources focused on solving climate change and, oh by the way, they’re making a helluva lot of money too. Isn’t that a good thing?

6. Real Solutions.

When I work with students in my entrepreneurship classes, I guide them through finding problems and solving them. Many of them focus on climate issues, and I’ll ask them what the main problem is.

Their answer?

“I don’t know what to believe, and there aren’t any solutions.”

Wow, that’s a heavy burden to carry. (See my items #1 and #2 above). No wonder they’re so depressed about climate change. But it’s true, isn’t it?

We don’t know what solutions there are, if any.

My solar colleagues will tell me that if we replace everything with solar and electrify everything (i.e., autos) by 2050 we can get halfway to our temperature reduction goals. But when I do quick back-of-the-envelope calculations I see we’d have to increase current global capacity by about 10,000 times; and to add similar storage capacity to meet 24/7 requirements would double or triple that. It’s hard to imagine how building 20,000 more factories, mining the materials used in production, running those factories, and deploying those systems would decrease our CO2 emissions, but I really don’t know. I would love to be wrong about that.

The point is that nobody’s right about it either. Do we replace everything with solar ASAP? Do we electrify all vehicles by tomorrow? Do we fill up every available lake and line every beach with wind farms? And why do all of that if it only gets us halfway there and spends trillions in the process?

That’s the point. If there are solutions out there that get us ALL THE WAY there we should know that. And if there aren’t, we should know that too and begin developing them.

Think of how helpful it would be to have a running list of technologies, solutions, products, systems, and ideas — prioritized by cost, feasibility, availability and temperature reduction benefits. Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing to have before we spend trillions of dollars?

OK, that’s the end of our 6-step program. Let’s go forth and conquer…