R G O GLPL P N P G
The e orN Times So the latest news is that President Vladimir Putin of 5ussia has threatened to turn off gas supplies to 8kraine if .iev doesn’t pay its overdue bill, and, by the way, 8kraine’s pipelines are the transit route for percent of gas consumption for (urope. If I’m actually rooting for Putin to go ahead and shut off the gas, does that make me a bad guy
Because that is what I’m rooting for, and I’d be happy to subsidize 8kraine through the pain. Because such an oil shock, though disruptive in the short run, could have the same long-term impact as the Arab oil embargo — only more so. That embargo led to the first auto mileage standards in America and propelled the solar, wind and energy efficiency industries. A Putin embargo today would be even more valuable because it would happen at a time when the solar, wind, natural gas and energy efficiency industries are all poised to take off and scale. So Vladimir, do us all a favor, get crazy, shut off the oil and gas to 8kraine and, even better, to all of (urope. (mbargo You’ll have a great day, and the rest of the planet will have a great century.
“Clean energy is at an inflection point,” explains Hal Harvey, C(2 of (nergy Innovation. “The price reductions in the last five years have been nothing less than spectacular Solar cells, for example, have dropped in cost by more than 80 percent in the last five years. This trend is underway, if a bit less dramatically, for wind, batteries, solid state lighting, new window technologies, vehicle drive trains, grid management, and more. What this means is that clean energy is moving from boutiTue to mainstream, and that opens up a wealth of opportunities.”
New houses in California now use one-fourth of the energy they used 2 years ago, added Harvey. Chevrolet, Dodge and Ford are in a contest to make the most efficient pickup — because their customers want to spend less on gasoline — so they are deploying new engines and lighter truck bodies. Texas now has enough wind to power more than million homes. New Jersey generates more solar watts per person than California.
And check out 2power, which just went public. 2power works with utilities and consumers to lower electricity usage and bills using behavioral economics, explained Alex Laskey, the company’s co-founder, at their Arlington, Va., office. They do it by giving people personalized communications that display in simple, clear terms how their own energy usage compares with that of their neighbors. 2nce people understand where they are wasting energy — and how they compare with their neighbors — many start consuming less. And, as their consumption falls, utilities can meet their customers’ demand without having to build new power plants to handle peak loads a few days of the year. (verybody wins. 2power just signed up the Tokyo (lectric Power Company and its 20 million homes.
Putting all its customers together since it was founded in 200 , said Laskey, 2power has already saved about “ terawatt hours of energy” and expects to be soon saving that annually. The Hoover Dam produces about terawatts hours of energy a year. So we just got a new Hoover Dam — for free — in Arlington, Va.
A gas embargo by Putin would also reinforce the message of the 8nited Nations’ latest climate report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned with greater confidence than ever that human-created carbon emissions are steadily melting more ice, creating more dangerous sea level rise, stressing ecosystems around the globe and creating more ocean acidification, from oceans absorbing more C02, posing “a fundamental challenge to marine organisms and ecosystems.”
Sunday, at 0 p.m. (astern time, Showtime will begin airing a compelling nine-part series, called “Years of Living Dangerously,” about how environmental and climate stresses affect real people. The first episode features Harrison Ford confronting Indonesian officials about the runaway deforestation in one of their national parks, Don Cheadle following evangelicals in Texas wrestling with the tension between their faith and what is happening to their environment, and this
columnist exploring how the prolonged drought in Syria contributed to the uprising there. The ninth episode is an in-depth interview with President Obama on environment and climate issues.
I asked Harrison ord, a longtime board member of Conservation International, whether working on the documentary left him feeling it was all too late. “It isn’t too late; it can’t be too late,” he said. “Is it too late to teach our kids the difference between right and wrong If we are not ready to redress something happening on our watch, how can we expect our kids to do something about it ” emember, he added, “nature will be just fine without us. Nature doesn’t need people. People need nature. That is why we can’t save ourselves without saving nature.”
ord is right. We can still do this. We are closer to both irreversible dangers on climate and scale solutions on clean tech than people realize. Just a little leadership now by America or a little scare by Putin would make a big difference.