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Time to wave the green-spangled banner
OPINION
Green-spangled banner The best way to promote clean energy is to ignore climate change and focus on things like jobs, money and national security, says film-maker Peter Byck IN THE 1970s everyone thought environmentalism meant granola, which meant health food stores, which meant carob, a horrible substance the healthfoodies told us we should eat instead of chocolate. In the same decade, US president Jimmy Carter reduced the speed limit on interstates from 70 miles per hour to 55 mph to save energy. Carter got kicked out and carob made it feel like “doing the right thing” was akin to taking medicine: the environmental movement was saddled with pseudo-chocolate and painfully slow driving. Now motoring is going electric, not because of its moral compass – it’s just that the engines perform much better. I took a ride with Elon Musk behind the wheel of his company’s new Tesla Roadster electric sports car. He floored it, and the g-force made my headphones rotate swiftly around my head. Goodbye carob, hello delicious chocolate! I’m a whiny liberal film-maker who has spent the past four years making Carbon Nation, a documentary about climate change solutions that doesn’t even care if you believe in climate change. I know climate change is real and happening, but you don’t have to agree with me to see the benefits of clean energy. A lowcarbon economy is also a national security issue, a great business opportunity, even just a way to keep families together. As The New York Times writer Thomas Freedman says in the movie: “It’s the most patriotic thing you can be, do, think or feel today. Green is the new red, white and blue.” 26 | NewScientist | 28 May 2011
This is exactly where I have in their cities to below 1990 levels, found great areas of common in line with the Kyoto protocol. ground with knuckle-dragging They are a competitive bunch, conservatives. Finding common in a slugfest to outdo each other. ground isn’t supposed to be Boston raises its building possible in the US – our lost, standards, so New York raises polarised land. But I’m here to its own and adds a mandate for tell you we’re not polarised, and all taxis to be hybrids by 2015. we’re far from lost. We’re being told And guess what: mayors become we’re polarised to keep political state governors, and a few of pundits in business. Problem them go on to become presidents. is, that story is being bought by Last year I saw the mayor most in Congress, so our march of Denver, John Hickenlooper, to a clean energy economy has campaign for the state governor’s been stymied, to say the least. seat. He told the following story Outside the bubble of Washington DC, people are much “I’m really glad the yogurt is cold in my fridge, I just less partisan. More than 1050 of don’t want to give the kid our 1200 big-city mayors have vowed to reduce carbon emissions down the street asthma”
of his city’s budget crisis. He gathered all the city hall employees, imploring them: “Save your jobs, figure out how to save money.” A janitor took up the challenge and said, in a nutshell: “We janitors work from 5 pm to 11 pm. How about we come in at 2 pm, empty your trash while you’re in your offices, then at 5 pm, start the vacuuming and loud stuff, and we’ll be done at 8pm, and we can turn off all the lights.” Number-crunching proved this would save a lot of money. The idea was implemented and jobs were saved. Now here is the unintended benefit: the janitors got to go home at 8 pm and spend time with their families. Hickenlooper won the election as a Democrat in a very Republican state. I think that tells us something. In the making of Carbon Nation we found many similar down-toearth stories about the benefits of clean energy. In Roscoe, Texas, a town so down and out its Dairy Queen fast-food restaurant closed, cotton farmer Cliff Etheredge wanted to build the world’s largest wind farm to help his town earn a steady source of income. His son moved home to help. They contracted land from 400 neighbours, enticed Eon Energy to fund it, and behold, they did it. Young adults who had left Roscoe to find work in Dallas and Houston could come home. It’s a pretty good deal. Titans of industry see the benefits too. Everyone that I met and/or interviewed, including Jim Rogers of Duke Energy, the US’s fourth-largest emitter of carbon
Comment on these stories at newscientist.com/opinion
Peter Byck is a film-maker based in Kentucky. Carbon Nation is being screened across North America and will be available on DVD in August
One minute with...
Mike Weightman The UK’s principal nuclear inspector is visiting the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan to discover what lessons can be learned Are you worried by the possibility of a radiation risk at Fukushima? No. I’m not reckless, but I understand the hazards of the business. I don’t think anyone is going inside the reactors, but we want to see the site for ourselves. As well as going to the Fukushima Daiichi site, where the accident happened, we are going to Fukushima Daini 11 kilometres away, which was hardly damaged, so we can compare and contrast, and report why one escaped damage and the other didn’t. It may be something simple, like the less damaged plant being on higher ground, but we need to find out. How many people are going? There are about 20 of us, from a variety of nations. What do you know already about the disaster? The information I have is that the reactors closed down OK when the quake happened, and began cooling down OK, but then the tsunami came along and knocked out all the backup electricity generators and backup diesel tanks. Because the tsunami took out the off-site electrical grid too, there was no cooling system for the reactors and the disaster unfolded. There have recently been suggestions that the quake itself, not the tsunami, may have caused the problems. What are the biggest gaps in knowledge that you want to plug? We want to establish what happened, when, and the implications. What was the physics of the event? We aim to forward our report to an international meeting of ministers convened by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) next month, so the world community can think about how to react better to events like this in the future. Do we need an international nuclear safety body that takes control and provides assistance when a nuclear accident occurs? Certainly we need a more robust system for disseminating information, perhaps through the IAEA. All governments need advice on how to
Profile Mike Weightman, the UK’s chief inspector of nuclear installations, is this week joining an international fact-finding mission to the site of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl
react when these things happen, and it would be better if it came from an international, independent body. Do you think TEPCO, which owns Fukushima, should have asked for help earlier? It’s not for me to second-guess what Japan should or shouldn’t have done. You have to remember the context, with 14,000 people known to have been killed by the earthquake and tsunami, 11,000 missing and massive destruction of infrastructure. Can any good come from the Fukushima accident? It was good to see the world community pulling together to learn lessons from it, and trying to improve existing safety standards. It also shows we should never be complacent. Is it bad news for nuclear power? Whether or not we have nuclear power is not my concern. My concern is that if it is used, it should be used safely. Interview by Andy Coghlan
28 May 2011 | NewScientist | 27
Health and safety executive
dioxide, Richard Branson of Virgin and Bob Iger of Disney (which has an internal carbon tax in place), wants a price on carbon. So does every military person I met, including ex-CIA director Jim Woolsey, every reporter including The Wall Street Journal editor Alan Murray, every economist and every nuclear proponent. All want a price on carbon. And they all concede Congress will never have the guts to do it. Yet we already have a huge carbon tax. A recent study by Harvard Medical School in Boston found that using coal as a fuel creates enormous financial burdens on the US economy. When factoring in mining, transportation and electricity generation, the bill is between one-third and half a trillion dollars in health, economic and environmental costs every year. This is what the business school folks call external costs – they aren’t paid by the coal or utility industry, but are picked up by ordinary people. Just using the study’s lower number, every man, woman and child in the US pays $1000 annually (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol 1219, p 73). I say, let’s lower this carbon tax by putting a price on carbon right when it enters the economy, and watch as clean energy innovation takes off. I love a hot shower, I’m really glad the yogurt is cold in my fridge, I just don’t want to give the kid down the street, or my son for that matter, asthma. I don’t think the oil, coal and natural gas companies are committed to emitting carbon. They are committed to making money. So let’s find ways for energy companies to make enormous amounts of money with clean energy, and leave the carbon in the ground, where it belongs. n
Green-spangled banner The best way to promote clean energy is to ignore climate change and focus on things like jobs, money and national security, says film-maker Peter Byck IN THE 1970s everyone thought environmentalism meant granola, which meant health food stores, which meant carob, a horrible substance the healthfoodies told us we should eat instead of chocolate. In the same decade, US president Jimmy Carter reduced the speed limit on interstates from 70 miles per hour to 55 mph to save energy. Carter got kicked out and carob made it feel like “doing the right thing” was akin to taking medicine: the environmental movement was saddled with pseudo-chocolate and painfully slow driving. Now motoring is going electric, not because of its moral compass – it’s just that the engines perform much better. I took a ride with Elon Musk behind the wheel of his company’s new Tesla Roadster electric sports car. He floored it, and the g-force made my headphones rotate swiftly around my head. Goodbye carob, hello delicious chocolate! I’m a whiny liberal film-maker who has spent the past four years making Carbon Nation, a documentary about climate change solutions that doesn’t even care if you believe in climate change. I know climate change is real and happening, but you don’t have to agree with me to see the benefits of clean energy. A lowcarbon economy is also a national security issue, a great business opportunity, even just a way to keep families together. As The New York Times writer Thomas Freedman says in the movie: “It’s the most patriotic thing you can be, do, think or feel today. Green is the new red, white and blue.” 26 | NewScientist | 28 May 2011
This is exactly where I have in their cities to below 1990 levels, found great areas of common in line with the Kyoto protocol. ground with knuckle-dragging They are a competitive bunch, conservatives. Finding common in a slugfest to outdo each other. ground isn’t supposed to be Boston raises its building possible in the US – our lost, standards, so New York raises polarised land. But I’m here to its own and adds a mandate for tell you we’re not polarised, and all taxis to be hybrids by 2015. we’re far from lost. We’re being told And guess what: mayors become we’re polarised to keep political state governors, and a few of pundits in business. Problem them go on to become presidents. is, that story is being bought by Last year I saw the mayor most in Congress, so our march of Denver, John Hickenlooper, to a clean energy economy has campaign for the state governor’s been stymied, to say the least. seat. He told the following story Outside the bubble of Washington DC, people are much “I’m really glad the yogurt is cold in my fridge, I just less partisan. More than 1050 of don’t want to give the kid our 1200 big-city mayors have vowed to reduce carbon emissions down the street asthma”
of his city’s budget crisis. He gathered all the city hall employees, imploring them: “Save your jobs, figure out how to save money.” A janitor took up the challenge and said, in a nutshell: “We janitors work from 5 pm to 11 pm. How about we come in at 2 pm, empty your trash while you’re in your offices, then at 5 pm, start the vacuuming and loud stuff, and we’ll be done at 8pm, and we can turn off all the lights.” Number-crunching proved this would save a lot of money. The idea was implemented and jobs were saved. Now here is the unintended benefit: the janitors got to go home at 8 pm and spend time with their families. Hickenlooper won the election as a Democrat in a very Republican state. I think that tells us something. In the making of Carbon Nation we found many similar down-toearth stories about the benefits of clean energy. In Roscoe, Texas, a town so down and out its Dairy Queen fast-food restaurant closed, cotton farmer Cliff Etheredge wanted to build the world’s largest wind farm to help his town earn a steady source of income. His son moved home to help. They contracted land from 400 neighbours, enticed Eon Energy to fund it, and behold, they did it. Young adults who had left Roscoe to find work in Dallas and Houston could come home. It’s a pretty good deal. Titans of industry see the benefits too. Everyone that I met and/or interviewed, including Jim Rogers of Duke Energy, the US’s fourth-largest emitter of carbon
Comment on these stories at newscientist.com/opinion
Peter Byck is a film-maker based in Kentucky. Carbon Nation is being screened across North America and will be available on DVD in August
One minute with...
Mike Weightman The UK’s principal nuclear inspector is visiting the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan to discover what lessons can be learned Are you worried by the possibility of a radiation risk at Fukushima? No. I’m not reckless, but I understand the hazards of the business. I don’t think anyone is going inside the reactors, but we want to see the site for ourselves. As well as going to the Fukushima Daiichi site, where the accident happened, we are going to Fukushima Daini 11 kilometres away, which was hardly damaged, so we can compare and contrast, and report why one escaped damage and the other didn’t. It may be something simple, like the less damaged plant being on higher ground, but we need to find out. How many people are going? There are about 20 of us, from a variety of nations. What do you know already about the disaster? The information I have is that the reactors closed down OK when the quake happened, and began cooling down OK, but then the tsunami came along and knocked out all the backup electricity generators and backup diesel tanks. Because the tsunami took out the off-site electrical grid too, there was no cooling system for the reactors and the disaster unfolded. There have recently been suggestions that the quake itself, not the tsunami, may have caused the problems. What are the biggest gaps in knowledge that you want to plug? We want to establish what happened, when, and the implications. What was the physics of the event? We aim to forward our report to an international meeting of ministers convened by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) next month, so the world community can think about how to react better to events like this in the future. Do we need an international nuclear safety body that takes control and provides assistance when a nuclear accident occurs? Certainly we need a more robust system for disseminating information, perhaps through the IAEA. All governments need advice on how to
Profile Mike Weightman, the UK’s chief inspector of nuclear installations, is this week joining an international fact-finding mission to the site of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl
react when these things happen, and it would be better if it came from an international, independent body. Do you think TEPCO, which owns Fukushima, should have asked for help earlier? It’s not for me to second-guess what Japan should or shouldn’t have done. You have to remember the context, with 14,000 people known to have been killed by the earthquake and tsunami, 11,000 missing and massive destruction of infrastructure. Can any good come from the Fukushima accident? It was good to see the world community pulling together to learn lessons from it, and trying to improve existing safety standards. It also shows we should never be complacent. Is it bad news for nuclear power? Whether or not we have nuclear power is not my concern. My concern is that if it is used, it should be used safely. Interview by Andy Coghlan
28 May 2011 | NewScientist | 27
Health and safety executive
dioxide, Richard Branson of Virgin and Bob Iger of Disney (which has an internal carbon tax in place), wants a price on carbon. So does every military person I met, including ex-CIA director Jim Woolsey, every reporter including The Wall Street Journal editor Alan Murray, every economist and every nuclear proponent. All want a price on carbon. And they all concede Congress will never have the guts to do it. Yet we already have a huge carbon tax. A recent study by Harvard Medical School in Boston found that using coal as a fuel creates enormous financial burdens on the US economy. When factoring in mining, transportation and electricity generation, the bill is between one-third and half a trillion dollars in health, economic and environmental costs every year. This is what the business school folks call external costs – they aren’t paid by the coal or utility industry, but are picked up by ordinary people. Just using the study’s lower number, every man, woman and child in the US pays $1000 annually (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol 1219, p 73). I say, let’s lower this carbon tax by putting a price on carbon right when it enters the economy, and watch as clean energy innovation takes off. I love a hot shower, I’m really glad the yogurt is cold in my fridge, I just don’t want to give the kid down the street, or my son for that matter, asthma. I don’t think the oil, coal and natural gas companies are committed to emitting carbon. They are committed to making money. So let’s find ways for energy companies to make enormous amounts of money with clean energy, and leave the carbon in the ground, where it belongs. n