Climate One

Power Poll Donnie Fowler, Clean Tech Strategist Loren Kaye, President, California Foundation for Commerce and Education Dave Metz, Pollster, FM3 "When Americans step into the voting booth, what influences their decisions on energy issues? Join us as we explore public attitudes underlying America’s energy future.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on April 19, 2012.

Covering Electric Cars Chelsea Sexton, EV expert featured in Who Killed the Electric Car? Katie Fehrenbacher, Senior Writer, GigaOM Ucilia Wang, Contributor, Forbes What's driving electric car sales? Who's buying, and which manufacturers understand how to market to these buyers? Does VC capital and government funding help or hinder progress? Listen in as three experts debate the issues. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on April 23, 2012

Water World Laurent Auguste, CEO, Veolia Water Americas Jonas Minton, Water Policy Advisor, Planning and Conservation League Jason Morrison, Program Director, Pacific Institute Wild weather and growing population are increasing stress on global fresh water supplies. Scientists project more extremes of both too much and not enough water in some places and times. In the United States, aging infrastructure is in need of upgrade, but cash-strapped governments have little appetite for big-ticket items these days. And then there’s the need to adapt California’s water capture and storage systems to the climate-driven "new normal." Is there a global water crisis? What role should corporations and governments play in stewarding water resources in the American West and in a growing and thirsty world? Join us for a look into the future of the essence of life. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on March 29, 2012

Speaking Youth to Power Abigail Borah, student, SustainUS.org Tania Pulido, Green For All Fellow; Brower Youth Award winner Adarsha Shivakumar, Stanford student, litigation plaintiff From courtrooms to diplomatic enclaves, youth advocates are clamoring to make their voices heard. Climate Progress dubbed 21-year-old college student Abigail Borah the “Durban Climate Hero” by for her appeal for faster action at a recent UN climate conference. Other advocates are filing suits claiming the U.S. and state governments have a legal responsibility to protect the atmosphere for future generations. Join us for a conversation with youth trying to build a cleaner future starting now. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on March 26, 2012

Going Local Dan Rosen, Founder and CEO, Solar Mosaic Michael Shuman, Author, Local Dollars Local Sense Andrew Swallow, Founder, Mixt Greens; Author, Mixt Salads: A Chef's Bold Creations After decades of globalization there’s a new current pulling the other direction. Local food caught on and now people are thinking about buying other products from another county instead of another continent. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on March 23, 2012

Covering Carbon Felicity Barringer, Reporter, The New York Times Marc Lifsher, Reporter, Los Angeles Times California’s scheme to reduce carbon pollution is forging ahead even though Washington DC and other states have hit the brakes on similar efforts. How is the state’s main climate law (AB 32) holding up in a national political environment hostile to any environmental regulations? How well is the mainstream news media covering the complex and murky world of carbon trading? Is the media giving people who deny basic climate science too much voice? We’ll discuss the news media and energy markets and politics with leading reporters on the beat. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on March 2, 2012.

GM CEO Dan Akerson Dan Akerson, Chairman and CEO, General Motors THaving posted the most profitable year in it history, General Motors seeks to drive technology toward a cleaner future. GM CEO, Dan Akerson says the “new GM” wants to be part of environmental solutions not the problem. He also talks about the Chevy Volt, climate-driven business risk, and funding of the controversial Heartland Institute. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on March 7, 2012

From Durban to Rio Tom Heller, Executive Director, Climate Policy Initiative; Professor, Stanford Law School Marc Stuart, Co-Founder, EcoSecurities Mark Schapiro, Senior Correspondent, Center for Investigative Reporting None of the experts gathered for this Climate One conversation expect much to come from the United Nations climate change negotiations.That’s not to say they think action has stalled. Rather, the panel, which included an international environmental lawyer, a clean energy investor, and a muckraking journalist, say to expect countries to continue investing in clean energy and carbon-cutting projects within their borders. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on February 29, 2012

Cruising 55 Shad Balch, Environment and Energy Communications, General Motors Roland Hwang, Director of Transportation Programs, NRDC Mary Nichols, Chair, California Air Resources Board Chris Paulson, VP of Strategy, Coda Automotive Have regulators, environmentalists, and automakers reached détente on the need to boost the fuel efficiency of America’s vehicle fleet? If one judges by the bonhomie displayed on stage by California’s top climate official, a transportation advocate, and two auto-industry executives during this Climate One panel, the answer is a resounding yes.The panel convened two weeks after the California Air Resources Board unanimously approved new rules that will require nearly 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles to be on the road by 2025. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on February 13, 2012

Power Plays: Media Roundtable David Baker, Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle Dana Hull, Reporter, San Jose Mercury News Cassandra Sweet, Reporter, Dow Jones Clean energy has boomed in recent years, but to guarantee its continued growth investors need stable, long-term policy support, according to three of the Bay Area’s leading energy journalists.The panel also warns consumers to brace themselves for higher energy prices, predicting that California drivers could be paying $5 per gallon for gas as early as this summer. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on February 3, 2012

Sun Spots David Hayes, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Interior John Laird, Secretary, California Resources Agency David Festa, West Coast Vice President, Environmental Defense Fund Michael Hatfield, Director of Development, First Solar Can large solar farms and the California desert co-exist? Yes, says this expert panel, which includes state and federal policymakers, California Resources Agency Secretary John Laird and Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes; an environmental advocate, David Festa, with the Environmental Defense Fund; and a project developer, Michael Hatfield, with First Solar. All agree that the Obama administration is on the right track with its commitment to bring relevant stakeholders together early in the process and in its preference for reviewing projects on a landscape scale. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on January 30, 2012

2011 has been marked by extreme weather. In the U.S. alone, a record dozen disasters caused more than $1 billion in damage. This, and the release last month of a special UN report on extreme weather, was the backdrop for this Climate One panel featuring three leading climate scientists. Chris Field, Professor of Environmental Earth Sciences, Stanford University, is Co-Chair of the IPCC working group that produced the extreme weather report. He says the report reached three main conclusions: that extreme weather events are increasing; that losses are increasing; and that there’s a lot we can do about it: “smart things that don’t necessarily cost a lot that can be protective of assets and protective of lives.” What the extreme weather events tell us, says Michael Oppenheimer, Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs, Princeton University, is that “the climate is changing, and we have to learn how to deal with that. The good news, as Chris said, is that there are a lot of specific examples where we have been successful. We’re falling behind right now. But, at certain places, at certain times, people have done a very good job.” One area acutely threatened by climate change is food production, where decades of steady gains could be reversed. Chris Field notes that global food production has increased by a predictable 1% to 2% per year over the past 50 years. But, he warns, “I see food security at the heart of a perfect storm.” One proven hedge against this uncertainty is resiliency, says Karen O'Brien, Professor of Sociology and Human Geology, University of Oslo. “A lot of people think of resilience as going back to what it was before, but it’s also about being adaptive, being able to deal with these changes that are coming in a way that has a short- and long-term perspective.” The reality of extreme weather is forcing impacted individuals – whatever their personal beliefs about climate change – to acknowledge that something is amiss. “What we hear a lot from farmers, for example, is that they don’t really think about climate change by reading headlines about climate change forecasts,” says Dave Friedberg, Founder and CEO, The Climate Corporation. “They think about climate change when they’ve had a significant loss two, three years in a row. I think the psychology of risk and the psychology of loss is such that you don’t necessarily think about it unless it is something you can relate to, or there’s an experience you’ve had associated with it.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on December 13, 2011

The Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication Dr. Richard Alley, Professor of Geosciences, Penn State The event is a moving tribute to the late Stanford University climatologist Stephen Schneider, as Richard Alley is honored as the inaugural winner of the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication. Alley, the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, is also host of the PBS documentary "Earth: The Operators Manual." Alley and Climate One’s Greg Dalton talk about the challenges confronting scientists who carry on Schneider’s legacy of communicating climate science to the public and policymakers. The intent of the PBS series and companion book, Alley says, is to present both the risks and opportunities presented by climate change, and to use different messengers to tell the story. “We’re hoping to communicate more, not only the imperatives of doing something, but the amazing opportunities that are out there,” he says. The good news is that we have the tools we need to get started. “The first place to start is that we know we can get there without game-changers. This is the wonderful thing. If you can get a hundredth of a percent of the sun’s energy, that’s all of humanity’s energy. If you can put a wind farm on the windiest 20% of the plains and deserts of the world, that is far more than humanity’s energy needs.” And it helps if that message isn’t coming solely from him: “‘Climate change matters to you,’ I can say that. But why now have an admiral in the U.S. Navy say it, because climate change matters to them.” He also doesn’t want to prescribe policy solutions. “I would like very much to bring forward what we know, why it matters, and what opportunities are attached to that knowledge. And then stop and say, ‘It’s yours,’” he says. That handoff invariably involves asking policymakers, and the public, to grapple with the tricky concept of scientific uncertainty. Fortunately, Alley says, Stephen Schneider excelled at explaining uncertainty, using techniques that Alley has made his own. “You have to say: ‘This is what we know. And this is as good as it can get. And this is as bad as it can get.’ And make that very clear to people,” he says. And though his inbox is sometimes the target of skeptics’ screeds, Alley’s preferred response is to engage. “There may be bad people out there, but I don’t talk to them,” he says. “Even the ones who call me names, when you can actually sit down with them, they care. Usually they’re arguing about things that are not really what they care about. What they really care about are their grandkids.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California on December 6, 2011

Boom or Bust? Dan Miller, Managing Director, The Roda Group Climate change “is going to dominate our world in the next century. It’s a very big risk, but it’s also a tremendous opportunity, if we make the right choices,” says Dan Miller. Miller, Managing Director at the venture capital firm The Roda Group, notes here that climate change is also treated much differently than other global threats. We spend billions on counterterrorism, to combat AIDS and other infectious diseases, to prevent a nuclear reactor meltdown, “but these kinds of risks have very low probabilities of actually affecting you. Yet we still worry about them a lot and are willing to take government action to combat them.” “Climate change, on the other hand, if we don’t address it, has the likely outcome that it will have catastrophic effects for nearly everyone,” he says. After reciting a depressing list of climate change impacts that are likely to or are already damaging the Earth’s natural systems – among them sea-level rise, drought, wildfires, melting permafrost, collapse of ice sheets , ocean acidification – Miller asks the salient question: “Why do we not act? Why, when we know the problem is huge, do we totally ignore it?” Evolutionary psychology offers some answers, he says. He identifies the factors working against action on climate change: CO2 and other planet-warming pollutants are invisible; the challenge is unprecedented; the causality is complex; the impacts are unpredictable and indirect; and all of us are complicit. Once one acknowledges the reality of climate change, there is a corresponding obligation to act, Miller says. He adds that individual action begins with asking our children for forgiveness, before moving on to reducing your carbon footprint, and believing, learning and engaging. What can countries do? Miller offers four recommendations: move to 100% carbon-free electricity in 10 to 20 years; keep tar sands and oil shale in the ground; expand R&D into geo-engineering, especially carbon capture and storage; and put a price on carbon. Miller’s preferred carbon-pricing vehicle is a so-called Clean Energy Dividend. A carbon fee would be added upstream, at the mine, power plant, refinery, or factory – enough to gradually raise the price of gasoline by $1 per gallon. Then, the federal government returns 100% of the proceeds on a per capita basis to citizens via a monthly check, with parents receiving one-half shares for up to two children.“That would drive a new economy of renewable energy and energy efficiency. I think most people would like it. I think conservatives would like it. It doesn’t raise any money for the government,” says Miller. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California on November 18, 2011

Sun Up Dan Shugar, CEO, Solaria Tom Dinwoodie, CTO, SunPower In the wake of the collapse of solar panel maker Solyndra, the solar industry has received front-page treatment for the first time. Unfortunately, most of the coverage has been negative and ill-informed. In danger of being lost, industry veterans Dan Shugar and Tom Dinwoodie tell this Climate One audience is the good news – that solar is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States. Dan Shugar, CEO, Solaria, offers a sense of the scale of the growth. “Solar is, for the last 10 years, the fastest-growing energy technology,” he says, recording 69% annually compounded growth, 10 years in a row. “Last year, our industry manufactured, shipped, and installed for homes, businesses, and power plants 17 gigawatts of power. That’s the daytime equivalent of what 17 nuclear power plants put out,” he says. Tom Dinwoodie, CTO, SunPower, adds that even assuming a slower annual growth rate, say 15%, solar could supply 100% of the United States’ electricity requirement by 2040. “In the last three years, if you just look at North America, there’s been three times more wind and solar installations, in megawatts installed, than coal,” says Dan Shugar. Dinwoodie and Shugar also address two recent events that have buffeted the industry – German firm SolarWorld’s WTO complaint alleging that Chinese state support has facilitated the flooding of the market with low-cost panels, and the bankruptcy of Solyndra. Yes, the SolarWorld dumping complaint has divided the industry, says Dinwoodie. But “you’ll see demand in the world pick up as a result of these low costs, and there will be more a supply-demand balance in the future.” Overlooked in media coverage of the issue, Dan Shugar adds, is that China maintains a 17% import duty on foreign panels. “We think having a conversation and trying to level the playing field would be the right way to go about equalizing that,” he says. On Solyndra, Dinwoodie says the firm “is basically a victim of the success of the solar industry.” Remember, adds Dan Shugar, that Solyndra’s loan guarantee, even at $535 million, represented just 2% of the Department of Energy loan guarantee portfolio. The real issue, he argues, is that “in a capital-starved economy, which is what we are now, it’s very difficult to get loans for proven manufacturing entities.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California on November 17, 2011