Eyes on the Prize: 100% Renewables Now!

Here is the talk I gave at the No Oil Trains! No Way! Rally on the Seattle Waterfront July 12 organized by 350 Seattle.  The event was to commemorate the oil train explosion that devastated Lac Megantic, Quebec a year ago on July 6, 2013, vaporizing 47 people and leaving the center of the town a toxic wasteland to this day.  Oil trains carrying the same unstable Bakken shale crude are regularly moving through Seattle and other Northwest cities threatening similar death and destruction.  We need to stop them.  We have the renewable energy technology to make exploiting oil shale, tar sands and other unconventional fossil fuels unnecessary. That was the topic of my talk. 

Video of part of my talk as well as Washington House 43^rd District candidate Jess Spear and Abby from youth climate group Plant for the Planet is here.  Especially watch Abby!  She is a super youth climate leader!  

No Oil Trains! No Way! July 12 Rally stages symbolic blockade of Seattle waterfront train tracks.

We hear all too much bad news today. Often it just weighs us down.  But there is at least one genuinely great story happening in our world now, and it is coming just when we need it most.  Solar and wind power are becoming the world’s biggest new energy sources. Renewable energy is finally breaking through.

In 2000 the big news was that the world had just produced its first billion watts of solar. It took 27 years to get there.  Last year the world produced 38 billion watts.  It could produce 55 billion watts this year.  That is more solar panels made in one week than in all of those first 27 years.  The U.S. now has four times the solar power plants it had in 2010.

Wind power is surging too.  By the end of 2013 the world had 318 billion watts of wind turbines. World wind power has grown over 10 times in just over the last 10 years.

Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy, powered itself one-third on the sun, wind and other renewable sources the first half of this year.  In the middle of the day a couple of months back Germany drew a full three-quarters of its electricity from renewables. 

Today the world is building more renewable power plants than fossil power plants.  Two-thirds of the new power China added last year were renewable.

Wind is already economically competitive with fossil energy, and of course nuclear. Solar is closing in, and is already there in some regions.  Solar panels hit an all-time low price just in the past few months.

The only disadvantage solar and wind now have competing with fossil and nuclear is that wind and sunlight vary so power generation varies. But economical batteries to store renewable energy eliminate this disadvantage. And the growth of electric vehicles is dramatically bringing down battery costs.

That’s the other good news piece of the story, and the one that comes home to this event today.  We don’t need these toxic, explosive oil trains rolling though our cities and along our waters. We can run much of our transportation system on renewable electricity.  

We can get our cars off oil.   Electric vehicle sales are climbing rapidly.  Tesla Motors projects it will sell a half-million electric vehicles by 2020, and that this will bring down the cost of batteries by one-third.

We can run our trains on electricity like they do in countries all over the world.  Running a ton of freight on electrified rail instead of a truck takes one-twentieth of the energy.  That’s right.  Just 5% as much.  Let’s take coal and oil off trains and put truck freight on them.

The world is already one-fifth powered by renewables.  Even conservative projections say it could be one-third in 20 years.  But we need to move faster than that.  Because global warming impacts are moving fast.  Faster than was expected even just a few years ago.  Polar ice is disappearing, storms are intensifying and dust bowls are spreading. Fossil fuel carbon pollution is responsible. We need to switch to 100% renewable energy as quickly as possible.  We need a major global campaign to make this happen.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and early '60s succeeded because the people of the movement kept their eyes on the prize, an end to legalized discrimination against African-Americans. (Of course the fight for economic justice continues.) All of us now moving for climate and our children’s world should put our eyes on this prize - 100% renewable energy now!

Our governor, Jay Inslee, has created a task force to design a climate policy for Washington state.  It’s expected to propose a cap and price on carbon pollution.  These tools can be helpful but they alone are not enough.  We need to go further and set a goal to move Washington state to 100% renewable energy as rapidly as possible. 

I’ve known Jay Inslee for 15 years since he was a congressman.  I know it’s easy to be cynical about politicians, and a lot of politicians deserve it.  But I also know that Jay Inslee is genuinely worried about global warming and what it’s doing to our state and world.  And I know he knows the tremendous potential of renewable energy.  He wrote a book about it. 

So I call on Governor Inslee to set a 100% renewables goal for Washington, to ask his climate task force to design a policy that will get us there as fast as humanely possible, and to work on the full range of policies we need to achieve 100% renewables beyond carbon caps and pricing.  

We could use the bonding power of the state to secure low-cost energy financing.  We could create a state green bank to fund energy transition.  We could provide inexpensive loans to make homes efficient and renewable powered. We could provide high payments for feeding renewable energy into the grid, which is how Germany achieved its success. 

We can do it.  The Salish Sea needs it.  Our children need it.  Our world needs it. 

Let’s put our eyes on the prize - 100% renewable energy now!

Ice-free future? Welcome to the Seattle and Portland Islands!

I’ve been peering out at Queen Anne Hill from my Eastlake Seattle window for some time wondering what the hill would look like on an ice-free planet, Lake Union long having become part of Puget Sound.  I’ve played with a map tool to envision the contours of Queen Anne Island and the Seattle Island chain.  Now Spatialities has done ice-free planet maps for Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles, and they are selling them at their site. Here are Cascadia’s future Seattle and Portland Islands if we are so foolish as to continue on our current trajectory. (Click on the maps for larger size.) These are beautiful depictions of a horrendous future.  May they help motivate us not to go there.  (p.s. I'm about 10 stories underwater by then.)

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A few years back I even wrote some lyrics on the topic. Here they are:  

THE SEATTLE ISLANDS

Take the ferry boat

To Queen Anne Island

Puget Sound’s a moat

All around is a fried land

Aurora fell down

Dead of suicide

In the waves it drowned

When the ice caps fried

Used to be a lake

Down there somewhere

Until the ice break

In the hot summer air

The lake was my home

Beyond were the mountains

But the future was blown

Cause we were not accountin’

With our gaseous spew

We boiled the oceans

Cared for by too few

We set it in motion

City once here

Now flushed down the drain

Old hilltops appear

Island chain remains

Live on Capitol

Take the Beacon boat

We have paid the toll

We have cut our throat

100% Renewables: A Declaration of Independence from Fossil Fuels

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to dissolve the bands which have tied us to fossil fuel dependence and to power our world fully on nature’s renewable energy, a decent respect to the opinions of humanity requires that we should declare why.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people possess certain unalienable rights, that among these are the protection of our own survival, freedom to have a future, and the pursuit of happiness for ourselves and our children. That to secure these rights we create energy systems that derive their support from those who use them. That fossil fuel has become destructive of those ends.  Thus it is the right of the people to abolish fossil fuel as an energy source and to create the fully renewable energy system that is most likely to effect our survival, freedom and happiness.

Prudence dictates that energy sources long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And experience shows that our economic system is more disposed to continue with dependence on coal, oil and natural gas while it seems that impacts can be managed, than to right itself by abandoning the fossil fuel dependence to which it is accustomed.  But when a long train of fossil industry abuses invariably pursues the same object, to hold us under economic dependence to polluting, climate-destroying fuels, it is our right, it is our duty, to throw off fossil fuel dependence and create a 100% renewable energy economy that ensures our future security.

Apologies to Thomas Jefferson.  But I think the lead author of the original Declaration would appreciate the spirit of independence from fossil fuels.  Jefferson looked to a land of self-producers, and 100% renewable energy will distribute energy production throughout communities.  It will empower us. 

The 100% call can now be made because solar, wind, electric vehicles, smart grids, energy storage and other clean technologies are becoming economically practical alternatives to fossil energy.  Tipping points have been reached, costs are coming down, and utility executives are losing sleep. 

Several groups have risen to carry the 100% Renewables message.

The Solutions Project is built on the work of Stanford scientist Mark Jacobsen, who has developed a 50-state all renewables scenario.

Renewables 100 Policy Institute has developed scenarios and roadmaps for the 100% strategy.  Go 100% Renewable Energy is the group’s public campaign.

Global 100%RE joins a number of international energy organizations in a global campaign.

100% Renewable Energy should be the clarion call and the battle cry of all who care for our nation, our world and our children’s future.  The urgent necessity to rapidly reduce carbon emissions says we must set this goal, and gear all our work and strategies to achieve 100% as rapidly as possible.    

100% Renewable Energy is not just about climate.  It’s about prosperity, building new industries and creating new jobs with clean, domestic energy sources.  This opens doors across the spectrum.  Energy independence has broad appeal. 

100% Renewable Energy is profoundly about saying, “Yes.”  About putting a positive vision in the foreground. Declaring the kind of world we want and how to make it.  Of course 100% must be in the context of building a more energy efficient economy overall.  This will allow us to reach the goal even faster.

So let us dissolve our dependence on fossil fuels and declare our right to 100% Renewable Energy.  To this end let us mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes and our honor as human beings who care about our future and our kids.

100% Renewable Energy Now!