The Oregon Senate has approved a bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.

SB 1059, which implements recommendations from 2009 Metropolitan Planning Organization Greenhouse Gas Emissions Task Force, does more than just set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in metro areas. It also directs state agencies to:

• Develop a statewide transportation strategy on greenhouse gases.
• Craft a toolkit to assist local governments and metro areas in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.
• Develop guidelines for scenario planning – used by communities across the country to consider alternative choices of land use patterns and transportation options to reduce emissions.
• Work with the Oregon University System to educate the public about the costs and benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• Report back to the 2011 Legislature with an estimate of how much it will cost local governments to prepare and select a land use and transportation scenario that reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and potential sources of funding.
• Report back to the 2013 Legislative Assembly with an assessment of how the agencies are doing on these tasks.

The bill passed out of the Senate despite unanimous opposition from Republicans, 17-13 (Sen. Rick Metsger, D-Mount Hood joining the Rs in voting “no”). The bill now goes to the House, where it will most likely come up for a vote Wednesday.

Mary Kyle McCurdy, 1000 Friends of Oregon Policy Director, stated in a press release:

This victory will help create healthier, sustainable communities across Oregon. And it’s a major step for giving Oregonians better transportation choices.

The press release also quotes Chris Hagerbaumer, Deputy Director of the Oregon Environmental Council:

SB 1059 is a win-win for cities and towns across Oregon. The bill will help create the tools and resources local governments need to make cost effective decisions on planning future growth while also improving air quality and reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Cities and towns of all sizes will be able to use the tools that the agencies develop.

The Task Force identified a number of additional benefits that would accrue from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including: saving families money by reducing their transportation costs; lower public infrastructure costs; healthier lifestyles due to more opportunities to walk and bike; and greater energy security by reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

UPDATE 2/25/2010: SB 1059, which would initiate steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions in transportation, is headed to the governor’s office after passing out of the House 32 to 26 Wednesday. The Rs voted against the bill as a solid block. Two Ds, Terry Beyer of Springfield and Arnie Roblan of Coos Bay, joined the Rs in opposition.

Amanda Gelder has a great interview with Jeremy Rifkin at Culturelab. What I find most intriguing are the connections Rifken draws among psychology, politics, and economics. We find ourselves in a pickle of historic proportions at the moment at least in part because of errors in thinking about these things.

I’ll try to pull together a couple of threads to focus on economic thinking and its relationship to the global crisis we face:

The Enlightenment view is that human beings are rational, detached agents that pursue our own self-interests and our nation states reflect that view. . .

A lot of interesting new discoveries in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, child development, anthropology and more suggest that human nature might not be what Enlightenment philosophers suggested. For instance, the discovery of mirror neurons suggests that we are not wired for autonomy or utility but for empathic distress; we are a social species.

* * *

Geopolitics is an extension of the Enlightenment view of human nature, the idea that we pursue our utilitarian pleasures and individual self-interests. In geopolitics, the nation-state becomes a macro view of that. Nations deal with nations by being rational, detached and calculating, pursuing self-interests, excercising power and acquiring more capital and wealth. That’s why Copenhagen failed. The world leaders weren’t thinking biosphere, they were thinking geopolitics. Everyone was looking out for their nation’s self-interest.

* * *

A lot of business people would say that you can’t be empathic in the market. But the market is a secondary institution–it’s an extension of culture. The real invisible hand of the market is trust, which is the result of empathic engagement. The only way you can have a market is if you have a shared narrative. The market is not a utilitarian frame of reference, it only exists by the social trust that allows people to engage in anonymous settings and believe that their engagements will be honored. When that trust fails, markets collapse and that’s what is happening now.

Rifken thinks the new world of distributed knowledge and distributed energy means we’ve moving from Homo sapien to Homo empathicus. His vision is attractive. I wish I could share his optimism. Still, we too often forget that philosophy does not live just in acedemia – it has real world implications. The “market” we have come to deify today is really nothing more than a myth, a powerful one that has turned destructive and threatens to consume civilization itself.

Rifkin has just published a new 600-page book, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, in which he expands on the ideas explored in the interview. I recall in my college days (note we were flower children of the 60s) reading books about evolving human consciousness.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s  The Phenomenon of Man. Lancelot Law Whyte’s The Next Development in Man. Remember Charles Reich’s The Greening of America? Answer: not without some embarrassment.

So count me skeptical. My remaining aspirations are much less ambitious than forging a new human consciousness, rather just to eat well and live warmly in an increasingly uncertain world.

Lane County is convening a stakeholders group with the objective of revising the county’s comprehensive plan and development code to address the burning issues of the 21st century: how to best ensure cleaner, healthier, safer, and more prosperous communities in a world increasingly threatened by energy shortfalls and a warming climate.

Here’s the text of an email sent out by Planning Director Kent Howe:

All,

As part of the citizen involvement process for Lane County’s Long Range Planning Program, you have volunteered to participate in the Lane County Stakeholder Group that will be reviewing potential revisions to land use policies and regulations.

The Lane County Board of Commissioners has directed Land Management Division staff to facilitate this group process.

The first meeting of the Stakeholder’s Group is Thursday, February 25th, 6:00pm, Harris Hall, 125 E. 8th Ave, Eugene.

At the Feb 17, 2010, meeting the Board specified the Stakeholder Group review the first 6 policy issues in the Goal One Code Amendment Proposal, attached. These correspond to lines 1-24 on the Preliminary List of Code Amendments spread sheet, also attached.

We look forward to working with you. If you have any questions, please give me a call.

Thanks,

Kent Howe
Planning Director
Lane County
541-682-3734

The text of the amendments proposed by Goal One Coalition and LandWatch Lane County is available here.

So all of you Lane County folks who are concerned about figuring out a way to strong local economies that will be resilient enough to grapple with the challenges we are already beginning to face, here’s your chance to take on the developers who normally have their way.

See you Thursday!

Republican Governor Jan Brewer has pulled Arizona out of the Western Climate Initiative.

The Western Climate Initiative is made up of seven Western states — Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington — and four Canadian provinces. Its modest goal is to achieve a 15% reduction from 2005 emissions levels by 2020. The regional cap-and-trade program was to begin in 2012, but California is the only state on schedule.

The New York Times quotes Benjamin Grumbles, the head of the state’s environmental agency:

Green and grow is our approach now.

Fearful that cutting emissions plan will slow the state’s economic recovery, Arizona will focus less on regulations and instead support initiatives to expand the use of solar power, nuclear power and other renewable energy sources. Arizona will look at “growth policies that limit pollution” and “steps to adapt to the changing climate.”

Arizona is also reconsidering the stricter vehicle-emissions rules set to take effect in 2012.

A glimpse at conditions to which Arizona is going to have to adopt to is found in the U.S. Global Change Research Program report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (2009):

Recent warming in the Southwest has been among the most rapid in the nation. This is driving declines in spring snowpack and Colorado River flow. Projections of future climate change indicate continued strong warming in the region, with much larger increases under higher emissions scenarios compared to lower. Projected summertime temperature increases are greater than the annual average increases in parts of the region and are likely to be exacerbated by expanding urban heat island effects. Further water cycle changes are projected, which, combined with increasing temperatures, signal a serious water supply challenge in the decades and centuries ahead. The prospect of future droughts becoming more severe due to warming is a significant concern, especially because the Southwest continues to lead the nation in population growth.

The report identifies several key issues for the Southwest as climate rapidly changes:

• Water supplies will become increasingly scarce, calling for tradeoffs among competing uses, and potentially leading to conflict.
• Increasing temperature, drought, wildfire, and invasive species will accelerate transformation of the landscape.
• Increased frequency and altered timing of flooding will increase risks to people, ecosystems, and infrastructure.
• Unique tourism and recreation opportunities are likely to suffer.
• Cities and agriculture face increasing risks from a changing climate.

“Green and grow.” Sigh.

A deal was reached at the last minute in “Nopenhagen” among the U.S. China, India, Brazil and South Africa. About 25 other nations signed on, but other countries instead agreed only to “take note” of the document – that is, to simply recognize that it exists.

Obama called “Copenhagen Accord” a “meaningful and unprecedented” step to slow global warming. Bill McKibben described it as “non-binding, unfair, and breathtakingly unambitious.”

Lars-Erik Liljelund, the director general of Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s office, had a different take:

The meeting was a disaster. The process needs to be changed because if we continue like this, we won’t be any further a year from now.

The deal reached calls for voluntary steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Obama admitted the agreement is just empty talk:

It will not be legally binding, but what it will do is allow for each country to show to the world what they are doing.

The Copenhagen accord “recognizes” the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2° C above pre-industrial levels. But the accord calls for only a 50% reduction in global emissions by 2050 (80% in developed countries), and does not contain any actual commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal. As a U.N. secretariat memo that was leaked at conference shows, the “voluntary” cuts on offer would produce a rise of at least three degrees and a CO2 concentration of at least 550 ppm, not the 450 ppm that supposedly is necessary to hit the 2° C target. The best guess from the modelers at Climate Interactive was that the proposals various countries were making might yield a world about 3.52° C warmer, with a carbon concentration of 770 ppm. That’s far from the 350 ppm scientists now believe is necessary to avoid climate catastrophe.

A decision on targets for reducing carbon emissions by 2020 was put off until next month.

The accord also establishes a goal of developed countries “mobilizing jointly 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries,” predicated on developed countries judging the mitigation actions to be “meaningful” and “transparent.” Trillions shoveled to the bankers, no questions asked. A pittance to save the planet, someday – and that “goal” hedged to the hilt.

The developing countries also pledged $30 billion for the period 2010 – 2012, with priority to be given to the most vulnerable developing countries. The money would be split between adaptation and mitigation, including forestry. Ian Fry of the drowning island-nation Tuvalu  compared it to “being offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our people and our future”.

The accord ends with a promise to take another look in 2016 – and perhaps to consider a 1.5° C target at that time.

In what is becoming a familiar refrain, Obama told delegates to quit bitching – an “imperfect framework” is better than nothing.

Obama should take lessons on negotiating from the Chinese. China won, in the sense they achieved their objective of stonewalling any meaningful agreement.

The Chinese should take note, as should we all: sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

A new study by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program finds that the water melting from Greenland’s ice sheet has increased by 30% over the last decade.

The study estimates that, as a result of the melting, sea levels will rise by 0.5 to 1.5 meters by 2100, threatening coastal cities and flooding island nations. That amount of sea level rise is double that estimated by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007. The IPCC estimate did not incorporate sea level rise due to the melting of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets.

Lead author Dorthe Dahl-Jensen of the University of Copenhagen said in a press release:

Greenland’s Ice Sheet is the single largest body of freshwater ice in the northern hemisphere. It contains around 3 million km of ice and, if it were to melt completely, this would cause global sea level to rise by roughly 7 meters . . . . Already now we are seeing how the areas experiencing surface melt are expanding northwards and that the periods of melt in southern Greenland are getting longer. The development in the last decade has taken scientists by surprise and it is still uncertain how the ice will react to future climate change.

The Summary – The Greenland Ice Sheet in a Changing Climate: Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic (SWIPA) 2009 is available at the AMAP website, as is the full Science Report.

Another new study published in the journal Nature adds further support to the AMAP results. The research team reconstructed the sea levels in the last interglacial period, around 125,000 years ago, at which time polar temperatures were around 3-5C warmer and equatorial sea-surface temperatures were around 2.5-3.5C warmer than today. The results showed that sea levels around the world during the last interglacial were between 6.6m and 9m higher than today, which implies significant melting of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets.

Even as the AMAP study is being released in Copenhagen, the climate talks, with less than two days to go, are blowing up. Even though the targets on the table are so weak and full of loopholes as to make the proposals meaningless, negotiators have given up on a replacement for Kyoto. The only remaining hope is that they will be able to come to a “politically binding” agreement to serve as a foundation for a legally binding agreement to be negotiated later.

The world’s poorer countries are blaming the world’s rich countries – and capitalism itself – for destroying the world, while rich countries are refusing to change targets that clearly fall short of what’s needed.

George Monbiot at The Guardian writes that the talks at Copenhagen are bigger than climate change – it’s a battle to redefine humanity.

This is the moment at which we turn and face ourselves. Here, in the plastic corridors and crowded stalls, among impenetrable texts and withering procedures, humankind decides what it is and what it will become. It chooses whether to continue living as it has done, until it must make a wasteland of its home, or to stop and redefine itself. This is about much more than climate change. This is about us.

And, as the words and stance of the world’s poorer nations show, it’s about fairness. Global warming cannot be addressed without addressing the issue of fairness. Sharon Astyk writes that people will even act against their best interests – even if it means their own destruction – if they perceive they are being treated unfairly:

I think it enormously unlikely that we will respond to climate change as we must. But if we do, it will only happen if people see themselves as part of a story in which the distribution of discomfort and trouble is done fairly, and they are ensured a fair share. Fairness may not be logical, but it is essential.

The “cult of economics” that dominates our political ideology assumes that people always always rational, always act for their own gains, that markets are always efficient, that economics doesn’t have anything to say about equity or fairness – and that nothing is wrong with any of this, ever.

The situation we find ourselves in demands unselfish behavior and acts, toward a common good; which in turn require redefining prosperity and a wholesale reworking of the globe’s economic system, including its its goals and its metrics.

It should be obvious to everybody that an economic system that results in wrecking Earth’s climate and destroying Earth’s ecosystems – squandering humankind’s “natural capital” in pursuit of growth – has failed to produce prosperity. We desperately need another model.

Lane County will at long last be reviewing and approving property line adjustments.

That’s the effect of amendments to Lane Code Chapter 13 – amendments which have long been pushed for by LandWatch Lane County and Goal One Coalition.

The Lane County Board of Commissioners approved the revisions by a unanimous 5-0 vote at its afternoon meeting on Wednesday, December 9.

Lane County’s historic “hands off” approach to property line adjustments has long allowed for developers to find tiny “lots”, often created when road construction sliced through properties, leaving new “lots” on each side. Speculators buy up the land; reconfigure the property lines by simply recording deeds; obtain “legal lot verifications” for the reconfigured properties; and then sell off the developable parcels at a hefty profit. All this happened without public notice, any opportunity for public comment or participation, adequate county review, or any way to challenge the result.

A Court of Appeals decision (Phillips v. Polk County) and the passage of two bills in the 2007 and 2008 legislative sessions ( HB 2723, dealing with retroactive unit of land validations; and HB 3629, dealing with property line adjustments) made it obvious to everyone – including the development community – that Lane County’s practices failed to comply with state law, putting Lane County property owners in an untenable position.

In the spring of 2009, the Board of Commissioners directed the Land Management Division (LMD) to initiate the post-acknowledgment plan amendment (PAPA) process to adopt the code changes drafted by LandWatch and Goal One Coalition. Following a joint public hearing before the Board and Planning Commission, the Board directed LMD to call together a work group composed of land use advocates, surveyors, and the development community to see if a consensus proposal could be achieved. The Planning Commission recommended approval of the draft resulting from that effort, and with formal Board approval the new provisions will now become the law of the land.

This morning (December 9, 2009) the Linn County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to overturn the Planning Commission’s denial and approve the application of its Parks Department to establish a park on 175 acres of farmland at the I-5/Highway 34 interchange.

An RV park is the key and most controversial element of the proposed park. Owners of several existing local, private RV parks complained vociferously that competition from a publicly operated RV park would put them out of business. While the original proposal envisioned as many as 196 RV hookups, the Board imposed a condition of approval limiting that number to a maximum of 100.

The local farm community also voiced strong opposition, arguing that farm land is irreplaceable and that farming, Linn County’s biggest industry, deserves and needs the county’s support and protection.

The Board of Commissioners has three elected members: Roger Nyquist, Will Tucker, and John Lindsey. Lindsey’s seat is up for election next November.

It should be obvious to everyone – even our county commissioners – that investing public funds in an RV park when we are facing climate change, peak oil, a financial crisis, and the need to ensure our food security is as foolhardy as can be. Come November, the voters will have a chance to voice their opinion.

Pete Boucot, a declared candidate for Lindsey’s seat, is leading the opposition to the Board’s plans. The county borrowed over $1.25 million from its road fund to purchase the property. Boucot objects this is an inappropriate use of the county’s road funds. Boucot also points out the commissioners have been silent on how or when the road fund is to be paid back or where the funds to develop the park are to come from.

According to James Hansen, the track being followed by international climate negotiators is the disaster track.  He says it will be better for the planet and for future generations if next week’s Copenhagen climate change summit ends in collapse.

As he writes in an article in Newsweek:

I am sorry to say that most of what politicians are doing on the climate front is greenwashing—their proposals sound good, but they are deceiving you and themselves at the same time. Politicians think that if matters look difficult, compromise is a good approach. Unfortunately, nature and the laws of physics cannot compromise—they are what they are.

Here’s the remedy to the climate crisis that is being rolled out at Copenhagen:

Hansen thinks the whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to start over from scratch. The climate problem is solvable, if we phase out global coal emissions within 20 years and prohibit emissions from unconventional fossil fuels such as tar sands and oil shale.

But not if we just keep blowing smoke.

The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Climate Science Report has been released as a lead-up to the global climate talks to be held in Copenhagen next month.

The intent of the 26 scientists who participated in drafting the report was to bring the IPCC 2007 Working Group 1 report up to date with the latest science. The report and a summary are available for download here.

The report warns that global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided.

Here are some of the most important points made in the report:

• Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40% higher than those in 1990.
• Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.190C per decade, in very good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases.
• Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990.
• Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models.
• Sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) is 80% above past IPCC predictions, consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets.
• By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected. Sea-level will continue to rise for centuries even if global temperatures are stabilized. Sea levels will inevitably rise by several meters over the next few centuries.
• Vulnerable elements in Earth’s climate system could be pushed past irreversible “tipping points” if warming continues unabated.