Ethical Innovators

Been busy developing Ethical Innovators lately. This is a co-production with the Carnegie Council, in New York City. It's a great, long-term follow-up to Shattered Sky, because it will allow me to dig into the most promising global solutions to the clean-energy challenge, yet with the challenge of putting out a new hour-long film every few months.

Issues could be in this sphere:

Nilles: Coal and Energy Choice

So, today Dan Evans and I interviewed Bruce Nilles for our film on climate change, Shattered Sky. Nilles is the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign Director. He's pretty focused on ending coal consumption as we know it, and he's not alone. I asked Nilles if there's such a thing as clean coal. And, in no uncertain terms, he said the exact same thing that Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy said (who I interviewed a few weeks ago): NO. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is in the study phase, and is at least 10-15 years away as a commercial enterprise. Of course, Nilles emphasized that CCS coal would cost twice as much, and be more expensive as solar and wind. Rogers thoughts that CCS is a good investment. Nilles railed against the production of coal -- which includes mountaintop removal, ash ponds, and a certain amount of deaths per year. Rogers didn't talk much about that.

But we're in a democracy, right? If we don't want this anymore, we can change it? "We don't have choice," said Nilles. He's right. Try calling up your monopoly utility company and requesting a second or third option for your electricity. For the approximately 25 states that derive 50% or more of their electricity from coal burning, citizens don't have much of a choice. Ultimately, is today's energy debate about providing us with more of a choice? When we find out more, what do we demand? I vote clean. And I suspect, with the right incentives, Rogers' Duke Energy might invest to help us get there. Possible?

Harlem for Earth Institute

"We the rich are literally dumping on the poor," said Lisa Sharper today while I was interviewing her for a short film that documents eco-hazards and eco-opportunities in Harlem. Sharper's NY Faith and Justice group has collaborated with WeACT and Columbia University's Center for the Study of Science and Religion to engage Harlem's communities around the issue of environmental justice. This is a hot topic in a place where public health indicators suggest something very fishy: some communities in Harlem and the Bronx have the nation's highest asthma rates, for example. Why? Well, as Sharper explained, there are no public dumps in Manhattan, but 40+ in the Bronx. And of the seven bus depots in Manhattan, six are in Harlem. So, every hour of every day, buses go though Harlem, creating these corridors of pollution that settles in clouds on schools, homes, children. Lots of it. WeACT is into its 12th year on an MTA Accountability Campaign, that's trying to get the city to think more about the health of Harlem's people. Having not seen or heard much about this story, I didn't care much. But now that I've seen it with my own eyes, I have two reactions: first, I'm ashamed to live in a country that lets this happen; and I'm hopeful that progress can happen fast.

Lovins: No Regrets Action!

Interviewed Hunter Lovins today for our climate change documentary Shattered Sky. Who is not jazzed and encouraged after talking with Lovins?! She advocates action toward clean energy and reducing CO2 emissions, not because it is the right thing to do per se, but because there's a compelling business case. She cited case after case where companies saved wads of cash by instituting various energy-efficiency practices. Energy efficiency could "reduce energy demand and carbon emissions by 50 %" she said. Inspirational.

Copenhagen Screening - Shattered Sky

Had a great conversation with an individual in Denmark this morning who wants to screen our climate change documentary Shattered Sky in early December to correspond with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Will probably try to time it with a simultaneous screening on Capitol Hill, something for Congressional teams. Do they know much about the story we're telling -- that the ozone issue during the Reagan Administration suggests how America can restore its environmental leadership on climate?

Becker: From Climate Weirding to Executive Solutions

So, with co-producer Dan Evans, I interviewed Bill Becker today for our documentary Shattered Sky. So, should we be calling this crisis "climate change" or "global warming" I asked Becker. I don't much care what we call it anymore, let's just do something about it, he responded, before deciding on "climate weirding." This, because there won't be uniform warming, but unpredictable extremes - droughts, extra rain, possible feedback, etc. On his blog at Yale, John Waldman says Hunter Lovins coined the term; but when I interviewed Lovins, she said she got the term from "a friend." So who invented it? Or more importantly, is it useful?

Becker is low-key, avuncular, and comprehensive in approach. During the last few years, he talked with hundreds of policy people, scientists, and other experts on what to do on three interrelated challenges: climate, energy, and national security. The conclusions of his Presidential Climate Action Project are in large part being integrated into early-stage Obama Administration initiatives, a credit to Becker and the work of his collaborators.

Carbon Age Over Tandoori Chicken

So, I'm eating lunch at my favorite local Indian place with my friend Eric Roston today. Roston's the author of The Carbon Age, a brilliant, definitive book about carbon as a structural element in life and civilization. So, over some tasty Tandoori Chicken, the conversation fortunately veers away from molecular composition and astrophysics to something I can at least talk about: ethics. Roston makes the point that the climate issue is the perfect moral quandary: any actions you and I take to try to arrest the build-up of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere will have little to no impact during our lives. We simply won't see it, since CO2 emissions have atmospheric lifetimes of 100-150 years, and sometimes a lot more.

Are our political and economic systems equipped to handle long-term, complex, moral issues? So far, no.

Check out this nice blog post, with a video of Roston on the Comedy Central's Colbert Report. Roston holds his own pretty well. Funny!