Earth Island Institute

Earth Island Journal editor Jason Mark is the co-author, with Kevin Danaher and Shannon Biggs, of Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots.

Missing the Deserts for the Cacti – March 24, 2009

Internecine battles are never fun, especially when they are occurring among your friends. In a story in today’s New York Times Felicity Barringer discusses an ongoing squabble among environmentalists in Southern California.

On one side: Carl Zichella, a Sierra Club expert on renewable power and Johanna Wald, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. They are promoting the installation of three thermal-solar plants in the Mohave Desert to generate renewable energy for southern California.

On the other side: David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy, which is working to place hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land in the Mojave Desert off limits as a national monument.

Recalling a similar green showdown involving wind turbines off the Cape Cod coast a few years ago, Barringer writes: “the environmental movement finds itself torn between fighting climate change and a passion for saving special places.”

One has to be careful about getting in the middle of family feuds but … I think Myers has his head in the (Mojave) sand.

Yes, by all means we need to encourage energy efficiency and conservation before building new power plants. And, yes, we must ensure that any new development is extremely careful not to harm sensitive habits and species.

At the same time, we have to remember that global climate change is a complete game changer. The “special place” that Myers loves won’t be so special if a 2 degrees C increase in temperatures makes the Mojave look more like the Sahara. Scientists are already warning that unless carbon dioxide emissions are checked (by, for example, thermal solar energy), the Mojave’s signature plant, the Joshua Tree, may go extinct.

Barringer reports: Mr. Myers is indignant. “How can you say you’re going to blade off hundreds of thousands of acres of earth to preserve the Earth?” he said.

Well, because if you don’t, there’s not going to be much of an earth to preserve.

As the climate change threat becomes more pressing, tensions like those playing out in the Mojave are only going to become more common. At some point, there’s going to be a similar battle between putting up windmills and preserving a ridgeline, or tapping some geothermal power and conserving an alpine meadow.

The choices aren’t going to be easy. But I’m afraid to say that if we really want to kick the coal-oil-and-gas habit, we might just have to destroy the desert in order to save it.

Greene Screen – December 5, 2008

The new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, isn’t as good as the last Daniel Craig venture. The granite-faced Craig turns in another top-notch performance as the most brooding Bond we’ve ever seen, a person with actual emotions, even if they’re all of the dark variety. But the plot is a bit confusing if you haven’t seen the first Craig film recently. And the number of killings (even by 007 standards) seems gratuitous.

Aside from a Parkour-driven chase scene along Italian rooftops, the best thing about the movie is its winking nod to contemporary environmental issues. In a post Cold War, 9/11-fatigued world, the screenwriters (producer Michael Wilson and co-writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Paul Haggis, and Joshua Zetumer) have decided that the worst kind of crime is an ecological one.

The ur-villain is one Dominic Greene (played by the French actor Mathieu Amalric, now turning up everywhere since his amazing performance in “The Butterfly and the Diving Bell”), a scoundrel who, among other things, is scheming to make a fortune by capturing and then privatizing the water supply that poor Bolivian peasants depend on. If this sounds like a re-hashed version of the Cochabamba “Water War” against Bechtel seven years ago, then you remember your current events pretty well.

The best part, though, is that even as Greene and his secretive Quantum organization are damming up Bolivia’s rivers, they are posing as well-meaning global environmental philanthropists. You see, the villains are using a front group called Planet Greene to buy up property that they tell donors they are securing for conservation purposes. In reality, they’re just trying to lock up the country’s water supply.

I couldn’t help but smile at the delicious irony the screenwriters are pointing out. In a society increasingly infatuated with all things sustainable, any depredation is excusable – as long as you cloak it with environmental do-goodism.

Is NIMBY-ism Fueling Climate Change? – June 16, 2008

The bi-weekly newsmagazine High Country News has long been one of my favorite publications. A journal “for people who care about the West,” as its tagline says, the News carries the kinds of stories you don’t find many other places — articles about, say, the importance of maintaining the Cowboy Myth, or a detailed piece about uranium contamination in Navajo country. As an Arizona native and a longtime California resident, I appreciate the News’ affection for the unique Western sensibility; as a reporter, I value its commitment to in-depth, long form journalism.

A great example is a recent article by Judith Lewis about the controversy surrounding a proposal to build new power lines to run renewable energy from the Mojave Desert to the LA region.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is eager to build an electricity transmission line from planned geothermal generators near the Salton Sea to its 4 million customers, who currently get about half of their energy from coal burning power plants.

Desert residents are vehemently opposed to the proposal. They say the construction of the transmission lines — which will run from 160-foot-tall steel towers, occupying a footprint 330 feet wide — will destroy the surrounding wilderness and threaten marginalized species such as the fringe-toed lizard and the endangered peninsular bighorn sheep. Mojave dwellers also say the plan is a throwback to age of Mulholland, when Los Angeles brazenly scoured the region for resources (especially water) to fuel its growth.

Lewis captures the nuances of the face-off brilliantly when she writes:

“Come out against a project that brings wind energy down from Wyoming … or moves electricity from large-scale solar installations to coal-dependent cities, and you come out against polar bears and in favor of cataclysmic drought, all to prevent a localized disturbance in your backyard. No matter how pristine that backyard, or how many rare species it contains, saving it can’t possibly trump saving the coasts from rising seas.”

Well said. Of course, the city, state, and federal agencies overseeing the project should do everything in their power not to send lines through Anza-Borrego State Park. And environmentalists should be on the lookout for any efforts to use the transmission lines, dubbed the “Green Path North” by LADWP officials, to carry electrons generated from coal, nukes, or natural gas. If the power lines are supposed to be green, then they should be carrying renewable energy.

But it’s hard not to think that some local activists have their priorities misplaced. One conservationist told Lewis, "No opening of any wilderness areas in this state to any energy corridors ever. Absolutely not."

According to Amy Atwood, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity: "It’s hard to see which Western constituency could possibly support this.”

Well, how about a constituency that recognizes that climate change is already dangerously altering Western ecosystems, contributing to droughts, wildfires, and shrinking and shifting habitats?

There’s no question it’s important to try to protect the lizards and the sheep. But if we decide that keeping power lines out of the desert is more important than shutting down coal plants, there may be no lizards or sheep to protect. Some opponents of the power lines, it appears, are missing the forest for the (Joshua) trees.

The transmission lines hullabaloo carries echoes of the debate a few years ago over whether to build wind turbines off of the Martha’s Vineyard coast.

I suppose that windmills might interrupt an ocean view. And I guess that some power lines could disrupt delicate desert ecosystems.

But the view of an acidic ocean and sight of a scorched desert landscape — both caused by climate change — will be a whole lot worse.

Same Planet, Different Worlds – June 10, 2008

On June 5, communities around the world marked the 36th annual UN-sponsored World Environment Day. This year’s slogan, “CO2:Kick the Habit” was underscored by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon who in a prepared statement said: “Our world is in a grip of a dangerous carbon habit. Addiction is a terrible thing. It consumes and controls us, makes us deny important truths and blinds us to the consequences of our action.”

The next day, the US Senate demonstrated just how blind it is by scrapping the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, the most serious piece of climate change legislation yet to reach Congress.

As the world burns, you have to wonder what planet these folks are living on.

Others have pointed out that the bill was a flawed piece of legislation that needed to be fixed or ditched. Still, the fact that Senators voted to close debate after only a few days is a disappointment: Climate change needs greater attention from political leaders, not less.  But far more disturbing are the arguments that were used to fight the bill.

As Eric Pooley writes at Time.com the most common critique of the Lieberman-Warner proposal was that it would wreck the economy.

According to Pooley:

“The Republican leadership spent last week trying to create not just a new litmus test for climate action but a new third rail for American politics: It wants any climate bill that causes the slightest increase in energy prices to be seen as a non-starter. … That's an impossible standard to meet, and if the Republicans succeed in establishing it, Congress may never get this done.”

To head off this price line of attack, climate justice activists need to do a better job of marshalling evidence — studies, reports, graphs and pie charts — showing that addressing climate change will be far cheaper than inaction.

Yes, tackling climate change will entail government investment, and that investment will likely be paid for through some mechanism for pricing carbon emissions. Transitioning to a low carbon economy will cost money to build a clean energy infrastructure. It will cost money to rebuild our long-distance trainline and revitalize our mass transit system. It will cost money to give homeowners an incentive to weatherize their homes and buy energy efficient appliances.

All of which, in the long run, will save money … and, hopefully, the planet on which we depend.

Rockefellers and Royals Go Green – May 30, 2008

The environmental movement is often caricatured as the domain of the limousine liberal. Yes, organic foods are better for the Earth, hybrid cars are wonderful, and passive solar panels on your rooftops help cut down on CO₂ emissions. But who can afford the grocery bill at Whole Foods, the costs of a brand new Prius, or the contractor’s bill for the solar array? You have to have bucks to save the planet – or so the conventional thinking goes.
That cartoonish depiction of the movement likely got a boost recently when some well-heeled folks decided to put their (substantial) money where they say their beliefs are.
The office of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II just announced that the monarch is investing in the world’s largest offshore wind turbine. The giant windmill, which is to be built on the northeast coast of England, will be operational by 2010 and will sell all of its electricity to the national grid. The queen, who is worth about $420 million, is also using her property company, the Crown Estate, to develop wind farms off the Scottish coast.
The announcement of the Queen’s investment came as the heirs of John D. Rockefeller sought to use their influence to compel ExxonMobil – the world’s largest publicly traded oil company and the progeny of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil – to start investing more in renewable energy sources. A resolution under consideration at the oil company’s annual meeting called for establishing an independent chairman position to guide investment in energy technologies other than oil and gas. The shareholders’ resolution was similar to those proposed in the past – only this time it had the public support of descendants of the Exxon founder. The resolution failed to pass, but it did garner 39 percent of shareholders’ votes.
Of course, you don’t have to be a millionaire to make a meaningful contribution to saving the ecosystems on which we depend. As Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center passionately points out, the only way to successfully create a sustainable society is through ensuring that everyone – regardless of income or ethnicity – is provided a way to transition to the green economy. If we rely on the Royals and the Rockefellers, we just end up with green apartheid … and then that limousine liberal caricature will ring true.
Still, the news is good news. After all, someone has to put up the money to get the green economy up and rolling.

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