Part 3: The Barrier

                                                                                                    written 11 December 2022

                                                                                                published 18 December 2022

   

            Part 1 described the increasingly dire climate situation, and the goal of complete decarbonization within the next 20 years.  Part 2 presented a vision of what a solution might look like in Ukiah.  This week discusses the barriers to that kind of transformation.

            Last month I had a meeting with several Ukiah officials to present the afore mentioned climate challenge and possible solution, hoping to stimulate a plan for moving forward.  The general sentiment was that things are fine as they are, the grid is more stable than previously thought, there is no need for immediate action, but they are keeping an eye on the situation.  I was specifically told the decarbonization in 20 year is "not going to happen".    

            To be fair, these folks are running as fast as they can to keep up with the daily challenges.  Their obligation is toward fiscal prudence and reliable service, and are reluctant to make large commitments, not an uncommon reaction. But if nothing changes, the climate crisis will expand until it crashes the economy long before kids today hit retirement.

            This reluctance breaks down into two categories: that it "can't" happen (technical), or that it "won't" happen (political).

            While the technical challenges are huge, and there is no assurance of success, the current opportunities are spectacular.  Just consider the changes in electric vehicles.  Twenty years ago, the best EV on the market was the GEM car produced by Chrysler, essentially a golf cart on steroids, thrown together to game the fleet milage standards.  Today serious electrical transportation options are offered by every automobile manufacturer on the planet, and new options are coming every year.  While the prices are still high, and the charging system limited, the situation is rapidly changing.  

            The same dynamic applies to renewable production hardware.  Solar panel costs dropped from $5.10 per watt in 2000 to $0.20 per watt in 2022.  Similarly, lithium storage battery costs dropped from $2.20 per watthour in 2000 to $0.18 per watthour in 2018.  The cheapest grid scale power installed today is solar with storage.

            One of the technical challenges is scaling up production of needed systems.  But we know this can change rapidly, when desired.  The first of 2,710 Liberty ship was constructed in 244 days and launched in 1941.  Two years later the average time was 39 days, and the fastest was less than 5 days.

            Clearly, financing is a huge challenge.  We are contemplating a complete retooling of the national transportation, heating, and electrical generation systems.  Global estimates range from $25T to $70T, which is daunting.  But that is a fixed cost for the hardware, as the energy is free.  In contrast, the global wholesale cost of fossil fuels is $4T per year, more than $80T over 20 years because those cost will constantly increase as affordable resources are exhausted.  The issue is not the amount of money, it is the limited perspective of those making the long-term financial decisions.

            For example, Ukiah could buy and install a Tesla Powerwall battery backup system in every home for a little more than the cost of the purple pipe recycled water system.  That would give the City almost 70 megawatt hours of storage, provide emergency power resilience to every citizen, and eliminate the increasing problem of midday solar overproduction.  The City has access to federal and state grants, and the bonding authority to spread the cost over time.

            Technically, a major shift "can" happen, but the political choice that it "will" happen is not yet present.  Part of this is political tribalism.  A majority of the Congressional Republicans still claim climate change is a hoax.  Many more people accept the climate reality, but still doubt the cause is man-made, alleviating any need for action.  A smaller, more powerful group knows the crisis is man-made and real, but they make billions off the existing system.  They can't imagine a need for change, even though stalling risks everything they now have.

            That leaves it up to the rest of us, who accept the problem is real and man-made, but are not satisfied killing the plant for short term profit.  We in Ukiah are fortunate, because we have access to the levers of power in our electrical utility.  We could become a model, working out the difficulties, showing what a sustainable, power resilient community might look like.

Part 2: The Vision

                                                                                                      written 4 December 2022

                                                                                                published 11 December 2022

    

            Last week I described the climate situation.  Doing nothing will shortly crash the global economy, and effective action to avoid that crash must be swift and massive.  We must complete decarbonization our economy within 20 years, electrifying everything, and begin significant carbon removal for decades after that.  This will require about 1-1/2 times additional electrical power, and will be constrained by the limited grid capacity.  What might such a solution look like in Ukiah?

            Ukiah presently consumes a daily average of about 300MWh, peaking about 50 percent higher in the summer.  Almost none of that power is produced within the city limits.  

            A survey done by the Renewable Energy Development Institute in Willits showed only 25 percent of homes in Ukiah had suitable roof top solar exposure.  Currently, less than 2 percent of Ukiah homes have roof top solar.  Residential power is at least 1/3 of our consumption load.  If every home with good exposure installed roof top solar, it would increase production by about 1/10.  A Google Map survey of parking lots and business roof tops within the City limits indicates room to install 30MW of solar array (assuming 50 percent coverage), which would increase power production another 2/5.  

            Imagine what this might look like.  Every parking lot would be shaded from the increasing summer heat, preserving the life of our vehicles while providing local power resilience.  Modern solar panels are warranted for 25 years, and will still be producing power for 50 years, without any inflationary increase.  

            Businesses and homes would be providing some of their own power needs, increasing resilience in increasingly uncertain times.  All the City essential services, like sewer, water, and emergency communications, as well as emergency cooling centers, health care facilities, and grocery stores, could be made power resilient.  Having some power in an emergency is infinitely better than being in the dark.  The City might even expand to include land dedicated to power production, further increasing power resilience.

            Full build out of solar options within City limits, would produce about 1/3 of the new power needed.  The remaining 2/3, about equal to our current power consumption, would have to be shipped in, but this runs into the transmission limitations of the grid.

            Right now, any power consumed must be delivered exactly as it is needed, transmitted over the grid to the Ukiah substation, and then over the local distribution system to the individual homes and businesses.  On average, our power system handles about 12.5MW an hour.  At peak times, that hourly rate can be three times higher, approaching the limit of system capacity.  However, if we had capacity to store power locally for use during peak loads, the system could easily handle shipping twice our current average rate.  Ukiah would need to store about 300MWh of power every day.  The good news is that kind of hardware now exists, is getting cheaper every year, and is being installed all across the country.

            Grid scale renewable power is becoming more available every year.  Within California, plans for large scale wind development off shore of Eureka are well along, with a potential for 36GWh when fully developed.  Off shore wind is estimated to produce 30-50 percent of the time, not tied to solar variation.  The Sonoma Clean Power Geyserville GeoZone geothermal project will produce 12GWh in just the first phase of development, with a higher capacity factor, operating around the clock.  In the US, 46GW of utility scale solar were installed in 2022, half of all new power plants.  

            Part of Ukiah's challenge is to produce as much power locally as possible, and build the storage capacity to allow the existing grid to ship in the rest of what is needed.  The other part of the challenge is to reduce demand, and facilitate shifting to electric transportation and heat pump technologies.  An early 1900's picture of downtown New York showed 90 percent horses and 10 percent cars.  Just a decade later the percentages were reversed.  This rapid technology change was facilitated by wide spread access to affordable loans.  A similar change could happen again.

            Ukiah needs to develop a General Energy Plan, defining long term goals and time frames, prioritizing projects, and then aggressively implement the plan.  The alternative is the collapse of everything we have come to expect of our society.  Now is the time to act.

Part 1: The Current Situation

                                                                                                    written 27 November 2022

                                                                                                  published 4 December 2022

            Last Spring, atmospheric CO₂ concentration hit 421 parts per million, the highest in human history and a 50 percent increase from preindustrial levels.  Paleo geologists tell us that the last time the Earth had that concentration was 4 million years ago, and the sea level was 30'-60' higher.  The elevation of San Francisco airport is 10', and Sacramento is 17'.

            The atmospheric carbon increase has been so rapid that sea levels are lagging far behind, currently estimated to be only a foot higher by 2050.  The global temperature has already increase 1.2°C since burning fossil fuels began, but half of the carbon dioxide increase happened in just the last 30 years.  Temperatures are lagging behind by about 15 years, which means 1.6°C is already guaranteed.  Furthermore, we are still adding massive amounts of carbon dioxide every year.

            The good news is that yearly increases have peaked and are slowly declining.  So much has been invested in renewable power production and storage technology that the prices have plummeted in the last 20 years.  Solar plus storage is now cheaper to install than operating an existing natural gas plant, while providing fixed power costs for decades.  Electric cars are now a serious transportation alternative.  The increasing impact of climate amplified weather disaster is getting everyone's attention, including the financial community, although some people still doubt the cause is manmade.  The fire season in five of the last six years has definitely changed the conversation in California.

            While effective national and global action is still inadequate, climate scientists are more hopeful that humanity can avoid the disastrous temperature extremes (increases of 4°C-5°C) that seemed inevitable even a few years ago.  That kind of an increase would rapidly destroy every economy on the planet, and risk adding humans to the growing list of extinct species.

            However, to avoid that disaster, we must stop adding any more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and begin aggressively removing what we have already put there.  We have to electrify everything as quickly as possible, ideally within 20 years.  This has to be done globally, because the reality of the world, especially as manifested by the climate crisis, is connected, unified, and not exclusive in any fundamental manner.   

            But even that best future will take time and will increase temperatures to an estimated 2°C or so, about double our current heat, causing significant climatic damage and social disruption.  Such a rapid and complete change of the global economic will require an unprecedented degree of social cohesion and financial investment, and be resisted by the massive status quo inertia of vested interests.  But every year, more people see that the current system is doomed, bankrupt not only by the structural inequities and the climate problem, but by the global exhaustion of affordable fossil fuels.  

            Putting aside, for a moment, the question of political cohesion, the technical challenges are also daunting.  

            In the US, the energy budget is roughly 1/5 for generating electricity, 2/5 for transportation, and 2/5 for heating and manufacturing.  Electric transportation is 3 times more energy efficient than internal combustion propulsion, as is heat pump technology, where heat is simply moved rather than created.  This still means that we have to shift all electrical production away from burning fossil fuels, and then almost triple the amount produced.  Toward that goal, California recently told their electrical utilities they must increase peak power production from 60 gigawatts to 150 gigawatts, in order to power this transformation.  

            The current electrical grid is already strained keeping up with existing loads, requiring new ways of thinking about handling the increased power.  For the last century the grid has operated by producing and shipping power only as it is needed.  Now we must collect power when it is available and store it until it is needed.  Instead of grid capacity limiting local power development, like a congested freeway at rush hour, distributed storage will be required to preposition power for maximum grid utilization.  Building distributed production of power, near where it is needed, will also reduce grid congestion.

            Despite the difficulty of making this transition, the alternatives of denial or despair are not productive.  While we still live, we have possibilities.  Are we too stuck in past stories, too selfish and frightened of change, to even make the effort?  The time of possibility is now.

Giving Thanks

                                                                                                    written 20 November 2022

                                                                                                published 27 November 2022

     

            Thanksgiving is the national holiday when we focus on gratitude in our lives.  Despite being overshadowed by the commercial frenzy of "Black Friday", and multiple football games, it is still about gratitude.  However, this essential perspective need not be limited to just one day, but can shape life every day, if we so choose.  When you begin to look, there are many places for gratitude. 

            I start the day being grateful to be alive.  I give thanks that I breath freely, and am grateful to all the beings that produce oxygen.  Despite losing clarity with age, my eyes still see, and are correctable with glasses.  My body is still able to stand and walk.  All my joints work, are limber, and relatively free from pain.  My bowels work, my digestion functioning without any conscious input from me, and I have adequate indoor plumbing.  At every season of the year, I have suitable clothing.  I live in a comfortable house, which is warm these days, and has room for all the things I think I "need".   

            After decades of false starts, I am grateful I have finally cultivated a solid meditation practice, which helps keep me centered internally, and relatively stable in my encounters with society.  When I check in at any given moment, I am usually at peace.

            I have functional indoor refrigeration, and can afford adequate nutritious food.  As I sit down to eat, I give thanks to all the beings who sacrificed their lives that I may be nourished.  I give thanks and bless all the water used to grow and process the food.  I give thanks to all the people involved in bringing the food to my table.

            I am grateful to live in Ukiah, where competent people make sure that I have adequate clean water, functional sewage service, and reliable electricity, despite working with limited budget and staff.  As a City, we have adequate groundwater reserves, despite the regional drought.  Living in a small town, I am grateful to be surrounded by the beauty of nature wherever I look, yet can have a pizza delivered.  I am grateful for the lack of traffic congestion, and the ability to meet people I know when out in public.

            I give thanks for living in California, where I was able to receive a subsidized college education that allowed me a creative and productive work life.  While that is mostly an artifact of the past, I am still grateful to live in a state that recognizes human rights and is on the cutting edge of addressing the climate challenge.   

            I am grateful for the opportunities for creative activities, with a wonderful shop that supports anything I am inspired to make, and a local paper allowing me to express myself every week. 

            I give thanks to my parents, and all the generations before them, who survived long enough for me to be born and raised to adulthood.  I thank my mother for being an articulate, life-long reader, who instilled those practices in me.  I thank my sister for loving me despite my manifest limitations.  I thank my wife for still being in my life after 27 years.  I am grateful that she is smart, articulate, funny, a wonderful artist, and brings novelty into my life.

            I am grateful to be alive at this time on the planet.  We are now surrounded by an array of amazing technology, giving access to information from around the world and the capacity to communicate as broadly.  While this is unevenly distributed, and can be terribly abused, it also allows unprecedented opportunities.  

            I am grateful to be alive as the human species is being confronted with coming together as a global family, which is the only real solution to the climate crisis.  I am grateful to be able to participate in this great transformation, and share the experience with others of like mind.

            This example is just a partial list.  I don't ignore the serious problems all around, or that everything we used to take for granted is at risk to sudden change.  But by starting my day with gratitude for the moment, I build up an internal awareness credit of the good parts of life, which allows me to engage with the hard parts without becoming depressed or sinking into chronic despair.  

            I wish for everyone a practice of gratitude.

  

2022 Midterm Election

                                                                                                    written 13 November 2022

                                                                                                published 20 November 2022

 

           As I write this, the Democrats have retained control of the Senate, even with Georgia going to a runoff.  The House is still undecided, but whoever wins will have a razor thin majority.  The election results were less than I hoped, but better than I feared, as the red tsunami never materialized.  In a 10 November, 2022 Daily Kos piece, Thom Hartmann described a possible reason.  

            The history of the world can be viewed as a progression of expanding society, organized first around families, then larger groups of tribes, regions, and eventually nations, including more people at each stage.  At the birth of America, Thomas Jefferson noted that every generation brings new people to power, shifting the perspective of what society should support.  This was expanded in 1997, by Strauss and Howe in "The Fourth Turning", which recognized that every fourth generation, about 80 years, the world is confronted by massive crisis, both economic and political, caused by limitations of the preceding generations.  Addressing that crisis transforms society for the better.

            For example, the American Revolution empowered common people in response to the tyranny of elite royalty, but the franchise was limited to white men.  Four generations later, the Civil War ended slavery and the economic structure it supported.  Four generations after that, women earned the vote, and the end of World War 2 saw the rise of the middle class.  Now, four generations later, our country and planet are in crisis again.

             Multiple states are reverting to Jim Crow racism.  American students are saddled with trillions in dept.  Our country is awash with more guns than people.  Wealth inequity is extreme, with billionaire funded media concentration pumping out prejudice, hate, and lies.  Homelessness is everywhere, and affordable health care is scarce.  Our biosphere is shredded, with critical insect species going extinct, threatening our food supply.  Carcinogenetic and hormone distorting chemicals, and plastic microparticles, pollute our blood stream.  Finally, the climate is heating up, threatening the foundation of the global economy. 

            All these issues stem from rapacious, exclusive gain capitalism, the life blood of the Republican donor base.  With no financial incentive for change, the GOP has embraced extremism and fear to maintain political power, with no plan for progress, only for revenge.  Based on history, the GOP expected a decisive victory this election.  Despite their best efforts, and expending billions of dollars, the fact that they failed in that goal is encouraging.  One way to read the midterm election result is the extremist strategy didn't play well with the voting public, specifically with the young

            Broken down by generations, the Boomers (over 65) skewed GOP by about 13 percent, and the next youngest (45-64) went GOP by 11 percent.  The Millennials (30-44) were about evenly split, but Gen Z (18-29) went 28 percent Democratic, which made the difference.  By 2024, the two youngest generations will outnumber the oldest almost 2 to 1, which is why the GOP is so frantic to suppress the vote.

            It is no accident that young folks are more concerned about the climate crisis, since they are going to live long enough to see the real impact in their lives.  This also fits into the idea that society is moving toward greater inclusion.  The climate issue is global, impacting everyone, and requires a global solution.  Nothing less will do.

            As I have mentioned many times before, the reality of the world is unity, and short-term exclusive gain is a bankrupt suicidal fiction.  We can no longer indulge this fantasy because we are too numerous, and our whims are now amplified by technological powers previously attributed only to gods.  We must mature or die off.  All over the planet, more people are beginning to understand and experience this. 

            I worked in earthquake research, studying sudden physical changes, which encouraged my impatient expectations for social change.  But transformation is difficult and ponderous, much like turning a very large vessel at sea.  We are transforming embedded programing, patterning, and stories with roots going back many generations.  While these are often not in our own best interests, they shape the world we experience, defining our reality.

            However, a fundamental tide is turning, perhaps barely perceptible at this moment.  But I am comforted by the unity of reality, as expressed in the climate issue, which cannot be denied, and must be embraced.  

The Climate Crisis Is Serious

                                                                                                      written 6 November 2022

                                                                                                published 13 November 2022

 

            The 29 October UDJ column by George Will denigrated the Federal Reserve for beginning to assess the fiscal impact of the climate crisis, trivializing the economic impact.  Because Will believes the Fed can only affect the next 5 years, any climate response is irrelevant to the long term.  He embraces the illusion that the "our modern, diversified, industrialized, service-oriented economy is not affected by the weather."  He claims the worst-case climate scenario would reduce GDP by only 10 percent by 2100, without mentioning where he got that number.  In the real world, weather events keep hammering the planet.  

            After a record heat wave, hitting 124°F, three months of torrential rain in Pakistan this summer delivered five times as much water as usual.  This flooded 1/3 of the country, displaced 15 percent of the population, destroyed infrastructure, radically reduced food production, and left large areas contaminated and disease infested.  The economy of Pakistan will not get back to "normal" for years.

            In just the month of October, the Guardian reported the following.  Intense rain in Thailand flooded 59 of the country’s 77 provinces.  Residents described the recent storms as the worst in 30 years.  In Venezuela, El Castaño was the latest town in Aragua state to be devastated by heavy rains, and mudslides ripped through the town of Las Tejerias, after 35 days’ worth of average rainfall fell in a single day.  The worst floods in a decade in Nigeria, affecting at least 18 of its 36 states, displacing over a million internally, with hundreds of communities cut off without access to food, clean water and fuel.  In south-east Australia the second ‘once-in-a-century’ flood in 11 years forced thousands of people from their homes in the states of New South Wales and Victoria, as well as the island state of Tasmania.  In Victoria state, the town of Echuca braced for the worst flood in 150 years, and the town of Kerang expected to be cut off from the rest of the state for two weeks.  In a single hour, Melbourne received half its average monthly rainfall.

            The other side of inundation is drought.  A recent study from the California Environmental Protection Agency reports impact on every resident from record-high temperatures, drought, and unprecedented wildfires.  This September, the West Coast broke nearly 1,000 temperature records during a 10-day heat wave, with many areas baking under triple-digit heat for several consecutive days, straining the electric grid.  The Trinity Alps glaciers and snowfields have virtually disappeared, and the largest glaciers in the Sierra Nevada have lost 65% - 90% of their area.  This decline in crucial freshwater supplies impacts agriculture.  More than a third of the country’s vegetables and 75% of its fruits and nuts are grown in California.

            There were over 6,800 fires in California this year, although no huge ones.  However, the last 20 years saw a severe uptick in wildfires, with more than 4 million acres burned in 2020, double any previous year.  Half of the state’s largest wildfires in the past 70 years happened in 2020 and 2021.  The fire insurance industry is beginning to exit California, or increase prices.  We can see our future by looking at the home insurance industry in Florida, already priced four times the national average, now collapsing due to ever increasing storm damages.

            Our economy is global, massively interconnected, subject to congestion, and vulnerable to sudden, unexpected changes, as witness the pandemic distorting "supply chain issues."  These economic relationships developed over decades, within a relatively stable climate system, which is now changing rapidly.  Of all CO₂ we humans have injected into the atmosphere, half has been in the last 30 years, and the heat we experience now lags behind by 15 years.  This means we will experience the world heating by at least another third more.

            Furthermore, we are adding more carbon every day.  At the very least, we must not make things worse.  The challenge is to decarbonize the global economy as soon as possible.  This will take commitment, money, and resources, much like mobilizing for war, only this is to preserve our habitable planet, not kill it.  To minimize climate concerns by suggesting an economy independent from the natural world, delays response, dooming society, if not our species.  When a firestorm comes over the hill, it is too late to prepare.  

 

 

 

 

The Choices We Make

                                                                                                        written 30 October 2022

                                                                                                  published 6 November 2022

                                                                                       

            The election is a few days off.  Most people have already voted by mail, so we sit here in anticipation, with our fate still to be determined.  The partisan divide is huge.  Republican extremists claim Democrats are all Satan worshipping pedophiles.  Democratic extremists claim Republicans are all fanatical religious money loving fascists.  The growing climate crisis doesn't care.

            As a progressive Democrat, I see the right-wing attacks as external projections of their own unaddressed issues.  My Trump addicted nephew, with deep unresolved rage issues, quickly descends into personal attacks, claiming that libs are all "haters".  Sexually repressed "religious" leaders focus on sexual issues in others, then show up in the news as sexual predators themselves.  Where in the Bible does Christ support hate, abuse, or killing?  Most of those who demonize current immigrants descended from immigrants who enslaved millions and exterminated the Native Americans.  

            I live with a baseball fan, and as we watched the post season games, the Republican ads pushing fear show up regularly, paid for by "Citizens for Sanity", a Florida based Trump aligned group.  The Republican Supreme Court allowed unlimited dark money to fund this kind of campaign.   

            The choice has always been between love and fear, between cooperation and competition, between inclusion and exclusion.  It feels like everything is building to a crescendo because we address only symptoms, not the fundamental cause.  As I have said many times before, humanity is being challenged to awaken from the illusion of separation.

            I recently started reading "Braiding Sweetgrass", by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Native American university professor of botany.  This wonderful book bridges the division between the reductionism of orthodox science, and the experience of unity fundamental to all the aboriginal cultures.   

            She points out that English, a dominant language of the planet, is 70 percent nouns, which are objects, versus verbs, which are active.  Werner Heisenberg stated that "our experience of the world is structured by the questions we ask".  As an English speaker, my entire language perspective is structured to objectifying everything, rather than experiencing it as active living forms.  Imagine watching your mother being treated as an object, processed into discrete parts, and sold in the market place for private profit.  That is the western way of viewing the natural planet, just resources to be extracted.  However, a unity perspective sees the Earth a living being, nurturing all life with myriad gifts, not earned, but offered.

            For humans, the most immediate offering is the oxygen we require every few seconds.  This is an ongoing gift from the plant and algae beings to everyone, for which we have never paid, just take for granted.  Because we never recognize, or appreciate this as a gift, we mindlessly destroy the sources, killing the forests and poisoning the oceans, as we race for increased fiscal profits.

            Kimmerer describes the Thanksgiving Address, which starts each school day at her local Indian school.  All the students participate in this expression of thanksgiving, enumerating the gifts given by the natural world which benefit humanity.  For each gift mentioned, the response is "we are of one mind", creating a group awareness of gratitude.  This contrasts with our dominate culture rooted in entitlement. 

            In a recent "What Could Possibly Go Right" interview of Joanna Macy by Vicki Robins, Macy describes how she responds to the growing destruction of the planet.  "My first word to anybody would be, don’t be afraid of your sorrow or grief or rage.  Treasure them.  They come from your caring.  When you’re not afraid of that, if you learn to treasure it as binding you to this beautiful planet, then it will nurture in you a fierce clarity for what can be done and be done by just you.  So, you’re going to find in your willingness to be here, a great love.  When you stand in that gratitude to be alive in this world, then when you take the next step into articulating your pain for the world that’s been given and felt, then it grounds you."   

            Live in the present, and start your day with gratitude.  The rest becomes not only manageable, but punctuated with moments of joy and wonder.  The choices we make shape our experience.

            Update from last week: the direct line to sign up for Ukiah's program of 100 percent renewable power is 707-463-6747, ask for Lori.