Prairie Politics with a European Flair (ND 2.0)

Happy Bastille Day!

On Thursday I summed up some of the speakers that I thought were particularly interesting in their policy insights. A glaring omission, however, was my failure to mention any of the politicians – you know, actual policymakers – who spoke. First off, we had a teleconference with North Dakota’s Congressional caucus: Representative Earl Pomeroy and Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad. They spoke briefly of the failure of the Lieberman-Warner legislation. Sen. Dorgan called it a ‘dress rehearsal’ for next year, and Sen. Conrad used the phrase ‘spring training.’ All were optimistic that in the next year, something substantial on the energy legislation front would be done, regardless of the outcome of the presidential election. Sen. Dorgan, however, also spoke freely of his own decision to vote against cloture on L-W. He identified the fact that the bill had been closed off to amendments as fundamentally weakening the potential for that legislation from the very beginning.

The consensus among the Congressional delegation – perhaps not surprising for representatives in a state that produces coal – is that whether we use coal moving forward is not really a question; rather we should be looking at how we will use coal. While this is a somewhat close-minded and premature conclusion, it does reflect political realities at least in the short term. Though I would also add, it is short term thinking that has got us into this mess in the first place.

Later in the day, the North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner gave his perspective, followed by the state senator I quoted in my last post. Governor John Hoeven echoed their remarks, the theme of which was: North Dakota is very well situated as the energy revolution moves forward. The state has the greatest wind potential in the United States, large swaths of land that is prime for carbon sequestration, and all sorts of perennial grasses that could be converted into biofuel.

Perhaps the most interesting political perspective of the day, however, came from Her Majesty’s Consul Annabelle Malins (the British have the sweetest titles!). Even the motivation for her coming to North Dakota speaks volumes. The British government, discouraged and frustrated by Washington’s inertia, has started working with state governments and the various regional accords in order to encourage and support positive climate legislation in the United States. (And they came to this stance even before the administration decided to punt regulation of CO₂ to the next president.) The UK, she said in her charming accent, sees climate change as a top priority both domestically and internationally. Moreover, all of their needs – satisfying energy needs, reducing warming, improving energy security, creating good jobs – point in the same direction. And they have already managed to reduce their emissions to below 1990 levels, all while growing their economy 45% during that same period. Sounds good to me.

Unabashed Anglophilia aside, it seems that there is quite a lot to be learned from the Brits and North Dakotans. A strange pairing to be sure, but now is the time to move beyond the conventional. How appropriate, on the 219^th anniversary of the storming of Le Bastille, to talk about the potential for cooperation and expansion in the clean energy movement. Vive la revolution!

 

A Lot Can Happen in the Middle of Nowhere

I’m writing today from windy Bismarck, North Dakota. Before I get to details about the Prairie Climate Stewardship Conference, which has so far been pretty interesting, let me first talk about this New England girl’s experience in the Great Plains. North Dakota is beautiful, but also, well, every bit as sparse as you might expect. When we arrived in Bismarck, having driven about six hours from the Twin Cities region, civilization was denser than the past few hours of driving, to be sure, but it was hard to identify any sort of ‘city.’ The Bismarck airport, which we drove past, was minuscule, and I don’t think I have yet seen any building higher than six stories.

Incidentally, the title of this post comes from the tagline of the movie Fargo, and was quoted by the CEO of a Bismarck-based power cooperative. So telling you all this is not (entirely) my way of being snarky. Rather, it should highlight the fact that North Dakota has not beat nature into submission in the way that I’m used to seeing. True, there are big box stores and asphalt expanses, but developments seem to be interspersed with nature, as opposed to the other way around. While I don’t know that much about North Dakota politics and policy, it’s hard to imagine that this has not had an impact.

The conference opened this morning by discussing the faith perspective of climate change. The speakers on this topic did a good job presenting the scope of the issue, as well as the moral implications of a failure to act. While I had heard similar arguments before, I found their approach nonetheless enlightening. Father Paul Schuster addressed a particular interesting issue. On the one hand, by emphasizing the scope of the issue, people tend to get overwhelmed and then despair. On the other hand, people like to think about fighting battles on an epic scale, not least when they are thinking about their faith. But he concluded, “It’s not about good versus evil. Oftentimes, it’s about doing good versus doing nothing.”

For me at least, this was a humbling start. Moving on, speakers over the next few hours covered a whirlwind of scientific and policy issues. I found Steve Brick, Manager of Environmental Programs at the Joyce Foundation, to be particularly interesting. Firstly, he asserted that fossil fuels, an inherently limited resource, are going to continue to become more expensive as worldwide demand grows. Any measures taken to lower prices are short term solutions that cannot possibly be sustainable. If anything, this will merely postpone the inevitable. The second thing he said that really caught my attention is that the limiting factors in the move to cleaner energy are not technological or economic. Rather, we are ready on those fronts, and the true impediments are behavioral and ethical. Green architecture, more efficient industrial processes, mass transit and carpooling: all these things could make a substantial difference in energy use and even prices, but people are not doing it.

The other area of discussion that I found especially illuminating was the talks on agriculture. Growing up, my idea of a farm was an apple orchard that had animals. So, needless to say, I have a lot to learn about the way in which agriculture can affect greenhouse gases. My extremely un-nuanced summary of today’s panels on agriculture is this: agricultural processes emit quite a bit of carbon dioxide, but they also have the potential to capture and reduce atmospheric carbon. Which means that agricultural policy is going to matter a great deal.

I will leave you all with this, as my incredibly finicky laptop battery starts to give me attitude. (Dear Laptop: I’m trading you in in a month. So bite me.) But expect further updates from the conference either later tonight or tomorrow. Wooot North Dakota!