To Till and to Tend

        I have just returned from a month long study abroad in Costa Rica.  (Great tidbit: Costa Rica is the size of West Virginia but has 4% of the world’s biodiversity, the same amount as the entire United States). Besides being one of the most memorable experiences, I learned more than I have in the past two and a half years at college. 

      One of the classes was Debates in Conservation of Tropical Biodiversity. We read various controversial articles on such topics as ecosystem degradation, resource scarcity, over population, and loss of biodiversity. These articles were from prestigious sources and well known authors such as Lester Brown and Jeffery Sachs, as well as from skeptics like Bjorn Lomborg. One concept that struck my interest was ecologic economics – how do you put a price on biodiversity?

      Ecosystems provide $33 trillion/ year in services such as preventing soil erosion, carbon sequestration, providing materials and resources, maintaining water sources, and basically everything else that the entire global population relies on every single day. However, ecosystem services and their degradation are not factored into the cost of our goods and services in the standard economy. We presume that these ecosystem goods and services should be free because they are natural. As long as there is water in our faucet, and paper plates on our tables, most people will never understand the true value and price of these scarce resources. Maybe, if water was more expensive, we would take shorter showers. Maybe if paper wasn’t so cheap, people would use both sides.

      I found this great quote from the Organization of Tropical Studies in La Selva, Costa Rica, “Only when the last tree has died & the last river has been poisoned & the last fish has been caught will we realize that WE CANNOT EAT MONEY.”

Itry to live in each moment, embodying the adage “it is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” As much as I enjoy the journey, ends and beginnings continue to hold greater significance.  We seize the opportunity of new beginnings, and the accompanying clean slate, to create ourselves anew.  On the other end, before we close a chapter of our lives, we have the opportunity to provide final memories for those we are leaving behind. 

President Bush has spent the last few weeks offering us actions with which to remember him by.  Mostly, he is finishing his journey on the same path on which he has journeyed the past eight years.  From infringements on women’s rights to quick sales of our natural resources, there is nothing unexpected or exciting.  But in his last weeks as president of the United States, he has added one more line to his CV –  set aside the world’s largest marine reserve for conservation.  Today, President Bush designated 195,280 square miles (an area larger than the states of Washington and Oregon combined) of islands, reefs, surface waters and sea floor as marine national monuments.  Such designation limits all forms of commercial activity such as fishing and oil exploration.  Bush’s admirable act at the end of his presidential tenure doesn’t clear his reputation as the worst president for the environment, but I hope it won’t go unnoticed, either.

With each dusk, comes a dawn.  President-elect Obama is at the cusp of a new beginning.  It is in these early stages that he has the opportunity to show us his best self.  Through his actions, he will tell us what issues he finds most critical.  His choices for energy and environment cabinet positions represented a strong commitment to environmental action (the environmental community is pleased).  But the real test begins after inauguration.

Since FDR, the first 100 days of office have come to represent the vision and potential of a new president.  It is critical that Obama addresses global climate change in his first 100 days, showing us and the rest of the world that the he will lead the United States and the world in addressing the greatest challenge of our time.

As we await Obama’s first days, we can encourage environmental action by letting his team know that we are watching and waiting. Join us in telling Obama “As a Jew and an American citizen, I urge you to stand fast in making climate change a top priority in the first 100 days of your Administration.”

            What does Teshuvah, the power to change our lives for the better that we attempt to actualize at this, the highest moment in the Jewish year, have to do with reducing one’s car    bon footprint? Isn’t connecting the two just a way of hitching a ride for one’s pet cause on the Jewish calendar?

             I raised this question in a blog two weeks ago introducing Jewish Climate Initiative’s Carbon Offsetting Guide, and want to continue pursuing it here.

            The place where the world is most stuck in combating climate change is at the point of connection between big and small, global and local, individual and government.  The most common reason for individual inaction is “it’s pointless for me to change my lifestyle/lightbulbs; I’m just an infinitesimally small part of this. It will take government, laws, and loads of money to deal with this.”

True it will, but the “big problem” is made up of billions of everyday decisions about how we choose to eat, shop, to heat our homes, and move around. Consumer spending represents 70% of the American economy. Somehow we have, as a civilization, contrived to so mismanage these primal areas of human life that the viable continuation of our civilization is in question.

            The stuckness comes from both directions. Governments are our agents, not our alibis. They won’t make far-reaching policy changes that will require us to alter our lifestyles until they see that we are ready to change and are not going to throw them out of power for requiring us to do so.

As I wrote then,

“We intuitively understand the solid-bodies physics of how an SUV, if driven without care, can flatten pedestrians. Knowing this, we are generally careful to make sure not to do so. The atmospheric physics of how careless driving of a different kind can contribute to flattening somebody’s mud hut in the Maldives is beyond most of our scientific ken and so outside our frames of conceptual and moral reference. After all, very few people would knowingly and deliberately drive their SUV into a mud hut. And if we did so by accident, most of us would certainly say sorry, and offer to pay.

“In Judaism, individual responsibility is the fundamental unit of social change. Teshuvah starts with me and you, (as my friend Jess Gold in England points out.)  ‘Great is Teshuvah, because through a single person repenting, the whole world may be forgiven,’ says the Talmud (Yoma 86b). This is the redemptive flip side of interconnectedness; the deep, sincere transformation of one person can change the world.”

I really think that’s true. But how can you put it across in a way that moves people to act? Let me introduce an idea that, I believe, will help.

              Rabbi Israel Salanter, the great nineteenth century founder of the mussar movement coined a famous saying: “My neighbor’s physical needs are my spiritual needs.” When I feed, clothe or shelter my neighbor, I am also fulfilling my deepest spiritual imperatives.

           Let’s be clear: Rabbi Salanter was not saying that, actually, it’s all about my spiritual needs. He didn’t believe that my neighbor is merely an incidental bit-part player in the great drama of me. Rather, he was pointing out that the world is so set up as to inextricably connect reaching out to sustain his material life with my spiritual growth.

            Today I believe it is no less accurate to say: “the planet’s ecological needs are my spiritual needs.”  When I engage with “ecological” issues, I fulfill some of the most basic and profound spiritual needs that Judaism identifies. This is true in manifold ways. I want to point out just one that has to do with Teshuvah the perennial power to fix and uplift  our lives  – surely one of the deepest spiritual needs that we have.

            An absolute prerequisite for Teshuvah is taking responsibility for harm we have caused. Maimonides says it unequivocally in chapter 1 of the Laws of Teshuvah: there’s no forgiveness for sins against others until you ask forgiveness from those you have hurt and make good damage you have done.

             There is no real Teshuvah for damage we do to people or their property until we identify and acknowledge the harm, and then do whatever we can to repair it.

            Back in the days when that meant redressing the damage of my ox goring my neighbor’s sheep; it was easy enough. I would say sorry to my neighbor, buy him another sheep and tie up my ox tighter in the future.

            But today the harm we can do every day is far more complicated and – scary. The vehicle I drive may be implicated in storms in Bangladesh or droughts in Mali; the food I put in my supermarket cart might have been produced with pesticides that poison water supplies and wreck eco-systems, before being trucked thousands of miles across the country to reach me. The manufacturing decisions made in the name of my everyday choices may, with or without my knowledge, cause havoc to the environment and to the lives of people far away.

            Striving to fix these things is not “environmentalism” or even “environmental teshuvah.” It is simply teshuvah. It is about redressing hurt and damage that we have caused in our daily lives just as if we had failed to repay a loan or smashed someone’s vase, or broken their leg in a car crash that was our fault. Whether or not we did these things knowingly and deliberately, once we do know about them; teshuvah means taking responsibility for putting them right.

            Today, the planet’s ecological needs coincide with each of our basic spiritual need for teshuvah; becoming aware of and repairing damage that we have done, and resolving to act more reverently and lovingly towards our surroundings from now on. And so we will each become part of the planetary fixing. As the Talmud says:

             “Great is Teshuvah because it brings healing to the world…

            “Great is Teshuvah because it brings closer redemption…

            “Great is Teshuvah because through an individual who does Teshuvah, the whole world may be forgiven.”

            Talmud Yoma, 86a-b.

I heard Al Gore speak two weeks ago.  For someone in my position, this was a bit like seeing Britney Spears or Angelina Jolie.  Only I actually recognize Al Gore.  The presentation was truly inspiring.  In fact, I was moved to tears.  The former Vice President and Nobel Prize laureate challenged the United States to transition to 100 percent carbon-free electricity in 10 years.  And as I walked out of the auditorium, amid a mob of hundreds of other “climate fans,” I believed it could be done.

As Gore noted (and the Daily Kos confirms), we have the resources and the technology.  Gore related scientific reports confirming “enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year.”  Sure, we’ll need to perfect transportation and storage – but the potential is there.  And with the right price on carbon, people will go the extra mile to work out the details.  In 1961 President John F. Kennedy challenged America to land a man on the moon within 10 years.  Eight years and two months later – on July 16, 1969 – the world listened as Apollo 11 lifted into the sky.  Thirty-eight years later (almost to the day), Al Gore established a goal of equal magnitude –  and I believe greater import.  For one could argue that the fate of the Earth rests on accepting his challenge.

And for at least ten minutes, I was confident that America would rise to the challenge.

But as the crowd dispersed along the streets of Washington, D.C., I felt my own confidence dispel.  Last December, Congress could not commit to providing 15% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.  How can that same Congress pass a law requiring 100% renewable electricity by 2018? As Hank Green of “EcoGeek” writes, this is a “football-sized” pill to swallow.  Will Congress actually prescribe such medicine for the American people?  And will the public actually take it? For although this prescription is in the long-term interests of our country, there will be many disenfranchised patients along the way.  As Green notes, the typical coal-fired power plant is designed to last 30-50 years.  Power companies will not dismantle a plant prematurely without compensation.  Sure, Gore acknowledged the need to “guarantee good jobs in the fresh air and sunshine” for all displaced coal miners, but that doesn’t account for the disenfranchised factory workers – and the vested interests – in maintaining those factories.

Gore invoked the Apollo mission as an example of American determination and ambition.  Yet, in many ways, landing a man on the moon was an easier goal.  For one, as Climate Progress notes, “the countries [sic] leadership could make landing people on the moon a goal is because there wasn’t a more powerful lobby to make sure that it didn’t happen.” And, as Cal Tech Chemistry Professor Nathan Lewis explains, “We already have electricity coming out of everybody’s wall socket,” whereas no one had ever been to the moon.  Converting the existing electricity system is not like NASA sending a man to the moon for the first time, “It’s like finding a new way to send a man to the moon when Southwest Airlines is already flying there every hour handing out peanuts.”

I want to believe that Gore’s vision is achievable.  After all, mankind has achieved the inconceivable in the past: Noah saved the world from destruction by constructing the ark.  What do you think? Can Gore’s vision take flight – or is it simply an impossible dream?

Click here for a link to a video and text of Gore’s speech.

Click here for more on Gore’s inspirational campaign.

This Guest Blogger was Rabbi Warren Stone. He is known nationally for his leadership on religion and the environment. He is the founding and current chair of the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ Committee on the Environment and serves on COEJL’s board. Rabbi Stone has served as rabbi of Temple Emanuel in the Washington metropolitan area in Kensington, Maryland since 1988.

“In a world where matters of faith seem so often and so tragically to divide us, there is no issue which aligns us more deeply than our shared dependence upon and sacred responsibility to this tiny planet, enfolded within its fragile atmosphere, spinning in the vastness of time and space.”

Kyoto and Bali agreements calling for worldwide reductions in CO₂emissions are a critical step in the world challenge to reduce our dependence on our diminishing world oil supplies. Yet according to current research, even if the nations of the world adopt the protocols, they will be insufficient to counter the growing impact of climate change in the current century. (Pew Foundation: Beyond Kyoto: Advancing the International Effort Against Climate Change).

It is time to start thinking outside of the diplomatic box.

With all due respect to the Lieberman-Warner Climate Bill in the U.S. Senate and the hoped-for policy change it would bring, it is time to challenge both our country and world populations to take steps beyond legislation and diplomacy to begin to transform our daily lives in ways that can impact this rise in CO₂.

I recently spoke at the British Embassy at a panel on Faith and Climate Change. It was part of a Washington, DC symposium on Climate Change and Security for all the US British consulates around the country. I applaud them for seeking leaders of faith communities to voice their concerns with diplomats. I served on a panel with a Christian Evangelical environmental leader, Rev. Richard Cizik and a young Muslim woman known as “Sanjana,” who started a “DC Green Muslims blog.” The British consulates sought voices from the faith community because they realize that the issue of climate change will demand a populist response beyond diplomacy. Faith leaders can and must inspire and mobilize their communities on this urgent issue.

People of faith on this planet number in the billions. Teaching people of faith basic environmental values and practices can have an immense impact. Perhaps we need an 11th Commandment of walking gently upon this earth of ours and being aware of our own carbon footprint as a religious mandate. Our religious traditions all share a spiritual mandate for caring for a Godly creation. Reaching religious leaders and their communities on this issue could not be more critical. Indeed, responding to climate change has become the most significant moral and spiritual issue facing humanity today. Our ancient religious traditions are concerned with protecting life and creation in the broadest sense. In a world where matters of faith seem so often and so tragically to divide us, there is no issue which aligns us more deeply than our shared dependence upon and sacred responsibility to this tiny planet, enfolded within its fragile atmosphere, spinning in the vastness of time and space.

I experienced this common faith when I served as a UN delegate representing many Jewish organizations at the Kyoto talks in 1997. At that time I spoke along with eight other religious leaders at the largest Buddhist Temple in Kyoto as a part of the conference. We concurred that people of diverse faith traditions have a spiritual and moral responsibility to act now.

As a religious leader involved in climate change issues now for many years I believe we need a gradual paradigm shift in our very way of life. In an article in The New York Times, “What’s Your Consumption Factor?” January 2, 2008, Jared Diamond pointed out that world consumption is growing at an unsustainable rate in the face of a growing world population, particularly in India and China. China has a population of 1.3 billion and growing. Our forests and natural resources will not be able to sustain this demographic explosion. Perhaps we might be able to sustain 9 billion people but multiply that in our century and you can see we are facing a consumption doomsday.

The western ethic which continually encourages more growth, more cars, more computers and media tools is fostering a road leading to disaster. Not only are we using up the world’s diminishing resources, but we are also contributing to climate change and threatening the world’s species in a silent genocide. We are all imperiled by climate change — a rise in water-borne illness, the devastation of coastal lands, frequently inhabited by some of the neediest populations –with world refugees with nowhere to go. We must act now. We must listen to Hillel, who chastised: “If not now, when?”

If diplomacy is not enough, what can we do and do now?

• Let us begin by greening our government and its diverse institutions. Let the Capitol, the White House and Congress become green examples to the nation. So too, our state and local governments need to become actively engaged in greening.

• Let us support bold initiatives for alternative energies and their rapid development to wean us from our fossil fuel dependency.

• Let us follow with our schools and universities. Let the state, county and local fleets and buses become hybrid or new fuel cell vehicles.

• Let us devote resources to public transportation and bicycle paths in all our cities.

• Let all our country’s religious institutions become models of environmental possibilities with green architecture, use of solar and wind power, community recycling and gardening and a true application of the spiritual teachings and truths of the earth.

• Let us also support a green paradigm shift by encouraging awards in environmental activism to architects, engineers, artists, statesmen and people of faith who set the highest and most outstanding standards.

• Let us encourage artists, musicians and writers to adopt this greening mandate and use their tools of music, drama, art and poetry to further environmental vision and activism.

• Let us support a new green foods movement which encourages a more vegetarian diet — not only healthier and more just, but far more sustainable for the people of our world.

• Let us learn from examples abroad. Last year, London had a “Sustainability Week,” with 350 green events for the public attended by tens of thousands of people. Holland and Austria created a “Green Wave 21st Century” festival throughout their countries and awarded prizes for ecological leadership.

Paradigm shifts start from the grassroots up. The US civil rights movement, which gained momentum from the faith and labor communities, is an apt analogy to guide our response to today’s demands of world climate change. The civil rights movement gained momentum not via legislation but rather by a populist participation throughout the South and across the country. Faith communities, those involved in labor and community leadership, as well as artists and activists of all stripes and visions, can now help lead the kind of political change and bold action necessary to preserve and protect life and all creation on this sacred home of ours.

Let’s focus on the positive and the doable. We don’t want our children and future generations to inherit a sense of doom and gloom, but rather to feel in full measure the innate and infinite capacity of the human spirit to arise and overcome the most demanding challenges humanity may face. We want them to see all life, including their own, as a miracle worthy of celebration. We want them to see the preservation of life on our planet as a mission worthy of their greatest passions and energies and to feel the joy that comes from joining in common cause for greater good.

Let me end with a prayer by a visionary poet, e.e. cummings:

i thank You God for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenly spirits of tress

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

The President’s “realistic” intermediate goal is only “realistic” because it requires virtually no action whatsoever. He hopes to halt US emissions – from the electric utility sector alone – by 2025. Yet, according to the Energy Blog, the Administration announced last week that US emissions had already fallen by 1% last year. Admittedly, this was likely a one-year blip, which can be attributed to high gas prices and mild temperatures, which reduced the need for heating and cooling – but it certainly underscores the inadequacy of the President’s proposal.

In fact, the Administration proposal flies in the face of scientific reality. Last year, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declared that emissions from industrialized nations must peak by 2015 – and decline by 20% by 2025. They won a Nobel Prize for this pronouncement. Yet, the Bush proposal does not require any reductions in that time frame. In fact, the “proposal” doesn’t require reductions at all. It merely asks for voluntary commitments. The President insists this approach is necessary to avoid an unnecessary strain on the US economy. Yet, as Environmental Defense explains, simply delaying US reductions until 2014 (from 2012) would double necessary reductions (and associated costs) for the decade to come. And, as I wrote in my March 25^th post, the US Environmental Protection Agency has found that the key climate change legislation being considered by the Senate could be implemented without significant harm to the US economy.

Ironically, the Administration claims that its plan will “inform” the Senate-scheduled debate on climate change legislation. But the Senate does not need the President’s assistance. To the contrary, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act provides for US emissions to fall by roughly 2% per year beginning in 2012, leading to 25% emission reductions by 2025 and 60-70% reductions by 2050. Reductions that will come from every sector of the economy. Bush’s plan – to continue the status quo for nearly two decades – can hardly be seen as “informing” the debate.

More than two thousand years ago, Rabbi Hillel challenged, “If not now, when?” Today, Bush declared that we would begin to answer that question in 2025. But that answer is inadequate. Climate change is real. And the time for action is now.

[Visit The Jewish Week to read my op ed on the Bush climate initiative]

[To read more about the need for US leadership on climate change, visit my December 26 post: Play Ball, US Needs to Join the Team.]

I’m in a very good mood right now. Those of you who regularly read my posts, may know that this is not always the case. But tonight was a very good night. For one, it was Dolly Parton night on American Idol. And I love Dolly Parton. (I’ve been to Dollywood three times.) But Dolly alone does not account for my delight. Tonight was also the inaugural night of the Al Gore “We” campaign. So, between renditions of Dolly Parton songs (and even a song by the diva herself), I viewed an extraordinary commercial about the need for US action on climate change.

Al Gore launched a three-year, commercial-scale climate change campaign tonight. The plan, which will feature television, print, radio and online advertising has been hailed by the Washington Post as “one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history.” The goal is to engage 10-million climate activists. The civil rights movement boasted 5 million. Significantly, Gore has dedicated all of the proceeds from “An Inconvenient Truth” and his share of the Nobel Peace Prize (among other things) to help fund the $300-million, three-year campaign. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.

The debut commercial is powerful. It challenges: “We didn’t wait for someone else to guarantee civil rights or put a man on the moon. And we can’t wait for someone else to solve the global climate crisis.” As I wrote here and here, I couldn’t agree more.

Gore’s campaign couldn’t come at a better time. The U.S. Senate is poised to consider federal climate change legislation in June. Yet, as I wrote in my post last week, far too many of our political leaders lack the courage to acknowledge the need for aggressive action. No one wants to be held responsible for voting for legislation that may increase electric prices in their jurisdiction or make it more expensive for their constituents to continue fueling their SUVs. And our Senators don’t know that we’re willing to accept these comparatively minor inconveniences. And, the sad truth is, many Americans aren’t. Yet, Gore’s campaign promises to speak to the masses – to persuade across political boundaries – about the importance of action. By reaching out to the captive viewers of prime time television, Gore will mobilize America – and, in turn, empower our leadership. Because the “inconvenient truth” is that we are all going to have to make sacrifices to solve climate change.

Please click here to join his campaign – and tell the world that We can solve the climate crisis.

Climate change is expensive. A recent study by the University of Maryland shows unabated warming could impose high costs in every region of the United States: from lost skiing revenue in the Northeast to diminished agricultural productivity in the Great Plains to dramatic losses of forestry production in the northwest. It will cost billions of dollars to construct sea walls to protect our coastline and millions more to respond to forest fires and hurricanes. Globally, the costs are mind-boggling. One frequently cited analysis on the Economics of Climate Change estimates that the international costs of unabated climate change will be at least five percent of global per capita GDP.

Yet, as a climate advocate, I seldom hear about these costs. Instead, I hear about the costs of responding to climate change. I suppose that’s how the political process works: no politician wants to take the credit for raising our energy bills or gasoline prices. During one meeting this week, a Senate staffer explained his skepticism about federal climate change legislation, declaring that his boss “doesn’t want to drive the US economy over a cliff.”

Frankly, I don’t think responding to climate change is what’s going to drive our economy over a cliff. Doing nothing, however, just might. And on this point, EPA and I seem to be in agreement. About a week ago, EPA released it’s analysis of the Lieberman-Warner bill – and the report confirmed what we knew all along: we can cut our greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 60% without harming the U.S. economy. As Senator Warner (the Bills Republican sponsor) says, “You can control greenhouse gas emissions in a manner that leaves the economy whole and is not burdensome on consumers.”

In fact, EPA forecast that U.S. GDP would grow by some 80 percent between 2010 and 2030 under the bill — only 1 percent below what it would otherwise have been. In other words, national climate change legislation will only modestly slow a thriving economy.

And that’s only half the story. The EPA analysis assumes the U.S. economy will continue to grow unabated absent climate change legislation. In other words, the baseline disregards the costs of climate change. It disregards the rising seas and dying forests and failing agriculture. It disregards the cost of responding to hurricanes and elevating houses. And yet, in one basic regard, EPA and I agree: responding to climate change will not drive the U.S. economy over a cliff.

[For more on the EPA analysis, check out EDF's blog: "How Much Will It Cost To Save the World."]

I’m not an economist, but I know the basics:  Lower the price and people will buy more.  It’s true for every industry: From the proverbial widgets of freshman economics class to flat-screen TVs and tomatoes — and renewable energy.  So, if we want to make people buy renewable energy, shouldn’t we make it cheaper for them to buy it? Apparently, the Senate fell asleep during Economics 101. 

Last Wednesday, the Senate rejected a stimulus package that included $5.7 billion in tax incentives for (among other things) the installation of energy-efficient appliances and building improvements.  The package would have given tax breaks to wind-farm developers, appliance manufacturers and businesses that install fuel cells.  The Sierra Club reports that this is the third time in only seven months that the Republican leadership has blocked a package of clean-energy tax incentives.

The sad thing is, this should have been a no-brainer.  For one thing, the breaks were signed into law years ago.  Unfortunately, they are set to expire at the end of the year.  The stimulus package provided an easy vote for a short-term fix to extend the tax breaks while Congress works out a long-term solution.  Moreover, these breaks should have been an easy political win.  As Scott Segal, an energy lobbyist in Washington told the LA Times, these are one of the few things that both the Sierra Club and industry can rally behind.  The IPCC was just given a Nobel prize for finding that climate change is “unequivocal.”  NASA just declared that 2007 can claim the dubious honor of tying for the second warmest year since the start of the Industrial Revolution.  Shouldn’t we be doing whatever we can to encourage the use of low and no-carbon technology?

As Gristmill reported last week, “These tax credits are good economics and good climate policy.”  That’s clear to me.  In fact, it should be clear to any student in freshman economics.  It’s a real shame that it wasn’t clear to the U.S. Senate.

That’s not to say that the US hasn’t made any improvements in this area. The new Energy Bill raises automobile fuel efficiency standards for the first time in 32 years. It also effectively eliminates the incandescent lightbulb within the decade. But before we get too smug, we should pause for a moment to consider China’s progress in these areas. China manufactures 80% of the world’s compact fluorescent lightbulbs. And what of that 35 mpg CAFÉ standard we’re so excited about? China’s fleet-wide efficiency will reach 36.7 mpg next year.

And while many (including myself), hail the US Energy Bill as a major accomplishment, the final bill lacked many of the safeguards we hoped for. Most notably, the bill’s accomplishments came with the sacrifice of a proposed Renewable Electricity Standard, which would have required 15 percent of US electricity to be produced by renewables by 2030. Yet China already obtains 17 percent of its electricity from renewables – and that number is projected to increase to 21 percent by 2020.

That’s not to say that China is perfect. Certainly, I’m wary of our ability to truly combat climate change without having firm commitments from a nation with 1.3 billion people. I’m also worried about China’s construction of an average of one new dirty coal-fired power plant each week. But while we may still want to occasionally point a finger at China, we should also have the commonsense to use our hands to applaud its accomplishments.


[For more on China's accomplishments in this area, read the comprehensive analysis by the Worldwatch Institute, Powering China's Development: The Role of Renewable Energy or visit China Watch.]

[PS: Last week, Whole Foods announced that it, too, will be eliminating plastic bags this spring!]