I’ll be talking about Eco Barons at the West Hollywood Book Fair Sunday, October 4, during a noon panel entitled: “The good, the bad and the ugly: Facets of Environmentalism.”  West Hollywood’s mayor, Abbe Land, will serve as moderator.

It seems I’m representing “the good” part in our panel title. My fellow panelists are covering the bad and the ugly: Andrew Szasz , author of Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves, and Dean Kuipers, author of Operation Bite Back.

Where: West Hollywood Book Fair, 647 N. San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood (directions and map)
Venue: The Open Book Pavilion
Time: Noon to 12:55 pm
Signing: After the panel, we’ll be signing books at the Book Soup booth (E17-20 on the book fair map)

A sprawling and provocative essay on the contradictory history and impulses of American environmentalism, “The Usefulness of Cranks,” is up on The New Republic website. In reviewing several recent environmental books, including Eco Barons, TNR writer Jackson Lears decries what he sees as the debased meaning of the very language of green in contemporary discourse:

Concern for “the environment” is a mile wide and an inch deep. Even free-market fundamentalists strain to display their ecological credentials, while corporations that sell fossil fuels genuflect at the altar of sustainability. Everyone has discovered how nice it is to be green. Will popular sentiment translate into public policy? There is reason to be skeptical.

He goes on to argue that modern America has long been in the sway of denialism when it comes to the environment, and that the big-talk-little-action approach that now dominates ecological discourse is just a variation of the same theme.

Toward the end of the piece, Lears strikes a more optimistic tone, suggesting that an increasingly muscular and effecitve brand of enviromentalism is emerging, and here Eco Barons is his chief source of evidence, demonstrating the value of environmental cranks, gadflies and visionaries. They stray outside the mainstream, and are therefore better able to see what needs to be done, and (now and then) actually push events in the right direction. This brand of environmentalism had its heyday in the 1970s, then was squashed during the Reagan Revolution (which managed to re-brand such bipartisan 1970s measures as the Endangered Species Act into left-wing conspiracies), only to rise once again in the 21st century. I particularly like this bit from Lears’ piece: “Echoing the title of The Robber Barons, Matthew Josephson’s classic account of Napoleonic financiers in the first Gilded Age, Eco Barons translates environmental activism into the idiom of business heroism. No longer knobby-kneed nerds in Birkenstocks, Humes’s heroes are resourceful, shrewd, hip entrepreneurs.”

Lears then hones in on Eco Barons‘ chapter on the electric car and its modern champion, Andy Frank:

The history of electric cars is a green parable for our time. It raises subversive questions about roads not taken. It shows that, without adequate public backing, green entrepreneurs–no matter how shrewd–cannot successfully buck the corporate consensus. And above all it challenges the fundamental dogma of development, technological determinism….

Humes’s account reveals that technological progress is not the product of some irresistible demiurge called “modernity”; and that human beings have the capacity to direct technology rather than merely genuflect to its force; and that in fact the very definitions of progress can be challenged and changed by cranks who resist conventional wisdom. But only–it should be clear–if the cranks have a shot at some money and some power.

I‘m here in Jefferson, Texas, at the world headquarters of the Pulpwood Queens, America’s biggest book club, talking about Eco Barons. Last night brought dinner and a lecture at Soul Surroundings in downtown Jefferson, where the lively discussion ranged from Doug Tompkins‘ efforts to preserve the rain forests of Patagonia, to the history and controversies of the Endangered Species Act,  to the good news about Nissan’s breakthrough Leaf electric car, to the bad news about Chevy’s planned hybrid, the Volt, which may be late to market and a money loser for struggling General Motors.

The discussion continues tonight at 7 when  I’ll be meeting with the Pulpwood Queens book club itself, at the one-of-a-kind Beauty and the Book hair salon and book store in Jefferson. And in case you didn’t know, the Pulpwood Queens are into tiaras and leopard — as you can see in the podium in the picture snapped at Soul Surroundings. Update to come.

My Eco Barons interview with UCLA’s Matthew Kahn is now up on the BookTV website. Check it out.

You can also catch a rebroadcast of it on CSPAN-2 this coming Sunday at noon ET.

My “After Words”  interview on BookTV, in which I discuss the Eco Barons with Matthew Kahn of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment, is running on C-SPAN2 this week. Catch it tonight (Sunday) at 9 pm ET, or Monday at midnight or 3 am ET.

While Americans try to make sense of General Motors’ humiliation, a giant brought down by the sort of hubris and miscalculation that led it to choose Hummers over hybrids, it’s worth considering what commentators in other countries have to say. Once you get past the annoying if inevitable schadenfreude, the views from a distance are painfully illuminating, such as Aditya Chakrabortty column in Britain’s Guardian, entitled, What’s Bad for General Motors is Good for the World.

He uses the sort of tough language rarely seen in the American press, calling the world’s “largest industrial failure”  a fitting and empowering (for other countries, at least) epitaph to the close of the “American Century” of dominance that GM once defined.  He suggests Detroit’s marketing might had been holding progress back, marrying the world to gas guzzling, climate-damaging vehicles. And in order to support this take, he cites the one area in which American car makers have been least able to dominate — the green cars (and trucks and buses and trains) of the future:

For Porsche, BMW and other luxury marques, Shanghai is already the second most important market in the world. And this year, for the first time ever, the Chinese are set to buy more cars than recession-hit Americans. But the developing countries of Asia are not just consuming more, they are closing the gap in manufacturing. In doing so, they are on a well-trodden path to industrialisation, following Japan and South Korea. Those countries pioneered cheaper, small cars; this time, the new frontiers of globalisation are leading the way on electric cars.

Yes, you read that right: the green auto, the will-o’-the-wisp of the motor industry, is already being made in smoke-belching Asia. The world’s bestselling plug-in car, the G-Wiz, was invented and built by an Indian firm, Reva. The company that has got the furthest in developing a battery-powered auto which can go for long distances is called BYD (short for Build Your Dreams) and is based in Shenzen, southern China. True, the little G-Wiz is a funny-looking thing, more milkfloat than motor. Then again, the Americans used to laugh at Toyota – and now it’s the world’s no 1. When pleading for Washington aid, GM execs made much of their new electric vehicle, the Volt – but that’s still years from going on sale. Such slow-footedness is hardly a surprise from a company whose vice-chair, Bob Lutz, last year reportedly described global warming as “a crock of shit”.

That GM and other American car makers are behind the curve on green technology is taken as a truism in Europe. When the London Times listed its take on the top ten “green cars” in the world, only one came from an American car maker, Ford — and even that was a vehicle sold only in Europe and China, the S-Max minivan.

Chakrabortty’s take is, in essence, that the American auto industry clung far too long to what he calls the “gasoline-industrial complex,” aided and abetted by short-sighted presidents and congresses who (under President George W. Bush) saw fit to grant a zero tax break to electric cars and a whopping $100,000 tax subsidy to Hummers. Hard to argue with Chakrabortty on that point, though in the interests of auto workers and the national economy, I hope he’s overstating matters with his ominous closing observation:

From this week, the car industry is living in the AD era: After Detroit.

Even as the Obama Administration pulls the plug on funding research for hydrogen-powered cars of the (sadly distant) future in favor of pushing the plug-in hybrid electric cars of today, it seems California remains wedded to its quixotic — and  very expensive — commitment to build a “hydrogen highway.”

In Washington, Energy Secretary Steven Chu broke the news a few days ago: a $100 million research subsidy for hydrogen fuel cell cars is being cut from next year’s budget, although support will continue for heavier stationary fuel cells that, once perfected, could store solar and other renewable power for use at night.

The reason for killing this Bush Administration program championed by the oil and car industry, which appears to have stymied rather than advanced the cause of clean cars for the masses, was the simple realization that a wry aphorism in electric car circles is true: Hydrogen is the fuel of the future, and it always will be. In another words, hydrogen sounds great as a gasoline replacement — clean burning, plentiful, emitting only water vapor when burned — but in practice, it’s expensive, dangerous, dirty and nowhere near ready for prime time.

Said Chu: “We asked ourselves, ‘Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?’ The answer, we felt, was ‘no.’”

The Obama Administration has decided to invest in research into battery technology for electric cars, to the tune of $2.4 billion.

California, however, is clinging to its hydrogen highway dream, having just approved plans to spend at least $47 million on hydrogen car research and infrastructure at a time when the state can’t even pay its teachers. Read more

The Obama Administration announced today that it would embrace a last-minute “midnight rule” created by President Bush that emasculates protections for the imperiled polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.

The rule adopted by Obama — and celebrated by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin — bars the government from using the polar bear’s protected status to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as an extinction threat if those emissions originate outside the animal’s Arctic habitat. However, as the official listing of the polar bear acknowledged, it is exactly those remote emissions — and the climate change they cause — that are destroying the polar bear’s sea-ice habitat and driving the creatures into extinction. The Bush rule, then, not only violates the intent of the Endangered Species Act, environmentalists have argued, but also dooms the polar bear as a wild species.

In making the announcement, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar promised continued, vigorous action to rescue the polar bear. But he said the Bush rule made sense, as the Obama Administration intends to use different methods of combatting global warming.

“We must do all we can to help the polar bear recover, recognizing that the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change,” Salazar said. “However, the Endangered Species Act is not the proper mechanism for controlling our nation’s carbon emissions.”

This was the same argument the Bush Administration employed in crafting the special polar bear rule, asserting that it would be wrong to use the act as a “back door” method of regulating climate change. But environmentalists have argued that the broad intent of the Endangered Species Act  unequivocally requires a response to all human-caused extinction threats, including global warming, and that the powerful law should be viewed as a valuable tool and opportunity to tackle the climate crisis. 

Congress passed legislation giving Obama authority to overturn this and other Bush midnight rules with the stroke of a pen — authority that expires May 9. Eight senators (including both California senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer), 41 congressman, 130 conservation groups, and more than 1300 scientists wrote Obama,urging him to overturn the special polar bear rule. But Salazar had been telegraphing for months that the rule would likely be left in place, a move he said today would  ”avoid uncertainty and confusion about the management of the species.”

Activists at the Center for Biological Diversity, which led the effort to secure protections for polar bears and forced the Bush Administration to acknowledge global warming as an extinction threat, wasted no time in harshly decrying the decision. “For Salazar to adopt Bush’s polar bear extinction plan is confirming the worst fears of his tenure as Secretary of Interior,” said Noah Greenwald, biodiversity program director for the Center for Biological Diversity.  ”Secretary Salazar would apparently prefer to please Sarah Palin than protect polar bears.” 

Last week, Greenwald and other environmentalists celebrated the administration’s decision to rescind another Bush midnight rule that had removed global warming completely from the purview of the Endangered Species Act.

“It makes little sense for Salazar to rescind Bush’s national policy barring consideration of global warming impacts to endangered species in general, but keep that exact policy in place for the one species most endangered by global warming—the polar bear,” Greenwald complained. 

A coalition of environmental groups has already gone to court to overturn the Bush rule as a violation of the Endangered Species Act — a legal battle that will continue, according to Greenwald, who asserts that greenhouse gases should be treated like any other pollutant that can harm an endangered species. Several groups have joined the government’s side in the lawsuit, which means the Obama Admnistration will have as allies Palin, the oil industry, and numerous trade associations representing major greenhouse gas emitters.

Cross-posted at Stop Global Warming at Change.org

The Center for Biological Diversity’s new 20th anniversary booklet features a sobering warning about global warming, the center’s new focus in its efforts to protect endangered species (including, it seems, humanity itself):

We had intended to look forward to the Center’s next 20 years. But the world’s leading scientists are warning that if we don’t get a handle on greenhouse gas emissions in six years, the planet will be committed to catastrophic, runaway global warming. The threat of climate change must be solved now, by us. The problem can‘t be passed on to our children. If emissions aren’t checked by the time today’s youth are old enough to make policy, it will be too late for policy.

So instead of 20 years, consider 350 parts per million: We must reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to fewer than 350 parts per million as swiftly as possible to prevent runaway global warming. This is the task of our generation. 

A third of the Earth’s species will be committed to extinction by 2050 if we don’t take action to get down to 350 now — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In all of human history — going back more than 200,000 years — the highest CO2 concentration reached before modern times was 308 ppm. The Earth’s atmosphere now has an average concentration of 385. In the geological link of an eye, we’ve dumped more CO2 into the atmosphere than built up naturally in the past 800,000 years. 

This is our era’s challenge in a nutshell. All other environmental considerations — extinctions, dying oceans, polar ice melt, sea level rises, renewable energy, deforestation, air and water pollution — are tied to and flow from the “350 or bust” climate red zone we now find ourselves in. How close are we to disaster? Take a look at the new issue of Nature, the world’s preeminent science journal, for the latest and none-too-comforting word on that question. (I’ll be offering a more in-depth review of the Nature articles in an upcoming post.)

The Center for Biological Diversity is concerned with much more than climate, and the rest of the 20th anniversary booklet is well-worth reading, including the map reproduced below showing milestones in the protection of endangered species and habitats.

The Climate in Crisis panel at the Los Angeles Times book festival had far more concurrence than conflict, agreeing that the challenge before us is great and immediate, and that decisive action is required. None of us prescribed an easy fix — technology alone will not save us, as many seem to hope (Electric cars! Solar panels! Clean {sic} coal!). Change has to be as systemic as the problem itself, or solutions will evade us.

Foreign correspondent Stephan Faris, who was inspired to write Forecast after witnessing climate-change-induced suffering in Darfur, offered the starkest of reminders: Change is coming, no matter what we do. We can act to limit the global warming we already have set in motion, or we can let it go unchecked and gather strength For all those who complain of the cost of reducing our carbon footprint , Faris warned that doing nothing also will carry a cost. A heavy cost.  (See the Stern Report and its conclusion that not acting on climate change will cost us $7 trillion in the next 40 years — 20 percent of all the money in the world).

Dan Sperling, director of UC Davis’s Institute of Transportation Studies and author of Two Billion Cars, asserted that a shift to new electric, hybrid and other alternative fuel vehicles is inevitable and will provide a big part of the climate solution, but only if state and federal policies are put in place to nurture and encourage that shift sooner rather than later. On the other hand, Bill Kelly, coauthor of Smogtown, a history of Los Angeles air, suggested the technology for clean and green transportation has been available for more than a decade, yet hasn’t gone mainstream. He chalked this up not to bad tech or lack of policies, but as a matter of values: Too many people want suburban sprawl and the lifestyle it offers, even it it comes with a long commute, and they have sought vehicles that gave them long-range mobility. To Kelly, the signficant part of the battle (not the only part, just a big part) is climate change vs. value change.

As for my perspective, there is merit in all these positions — all, in essence, are correct. But let’s take it a step further: We have the technology, legal framework and the economic incentive to act now to alter our wasteful, global-warming ways. In transportation, energy, land use and sprawl — all the pieces are there, right now, except the will to act decisively.

Here’s the problem: Those who have argued that action against global warming will be too expensive can advance this argument only because we — the media, our leaders, the public — let them conceal the true cost of our current system (also some of them make up their “facts.”). 

The hidden costs of, for example, gasoline powered cars are enormous: those costs include the proven health effects of smog and toxic auto emissions; the elevated heart disease, lung disease, premature births and cancer rates near our freeways; the spiraling childhood asthma rates and other lung ailments in our urban areas; the damage to our infrastructure, buildings, even house paint that pollutants associated with transportation cause. Now, who bears that cost? Is it reflected in the current price of gasoline? No. But why is that? If an ordinary citizen does something to make his neighbor sick, and does it knowingly, and doesn’t stop doing it even after the harm is revealed, that person can be held legally liable. He can be compelled to pay, and rightly so. Do carmakers pay for the damage done to health and environment by their cars and the fuel they burn? Do the oil companies? No.

And so, we are subsidizing the apparent low cost of gas and cars. We are paying for it in our sky-high health care and insurance costs, in our tax dollars, and in our lives and the lives of our children. That is the true cost of our current love affair with the internal combustion engine, coming out of consumers’ pockets, so that the hidden but very real cost of gas, right now, ranges from $5 a gallon to $15 a gallon, depending on who’s doing the estimating. Former Cal EPA Chief Terry Tamminen, who is profiled in Eco Barons, puts the cost at about $10 a gallon. We ignore this because “the argument of hidden costs” has so far prevailed in our discourse, skewing the debate, focusing on the price at the pump, which is only a fraction of the cost of the pump. A reality based cost-analysis shows that we will save money, not to mention lives, as we shift to renewable energy and clean cars.

The debate has been skewed in another way: There is a bedrock assumption — a false assumption — that Congress must create new laws to deal with climate change, and so we must wait for the compromised piece of legislation to emerge. The result inevitably will be far too little, far too late. Jim Hansen of NASA calls current legislative proposals little more than greenwash. The truth is that, while the right new laws would be very helpful, we have no need to stand still while we wait. There are powerful laws already in place — dating back 30 years or more — that give us most of the tools we need to act decisively on climate change right now. Indeed, we could have done so many years ago, and it is a scandal and a national shame that we have not.

First there is the Clean Air Act of 1970, which gives the federal government the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The US Supreme Court decided this in April 2007 in Massachusetts v. EPA. The court ordered the Bush Administration to put this sweeping power to use, but the president refused to act. Now it’s up to President Obama, who has taken the first steps to comply with the law. But more must be done, and soon — which comes back to this matter of values, not only those of our leaders, but the rest of us as well. Do we want a forceful regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, which will have a good chance of saving our world for our children and grandchildren — but which inevitably will require fundamental changes in how we obtain and use energy? Will we back such efforts, or well we side with the opposition, once again succumbing to the argument of hidden costs?

The second legal tool against climate change is the Endangered Species Act of 1973, under which the Bush Administration reluctantly extended protections to the polar bear, with a finding that global warming was the extinction threat. This was a pivotal finding, because it gives the government the power and responsibilty to limit the damage to endangered animals and their habitats caused by global warming. Bush issued a rule at the end of his term intended to be a poison pill against using endangered species protections to regulate climate change; Obama has hinted he would repeal that “midnight rule,” but he has yet to do so, despite congressional authority to revoke the Bush rules with the stroke of a pen. This poses a major test of our new president’s commitment to environmentalism. And he must decide this in the next 11 days, when the congressional permission expires.

Truly following the intent of the Endangered Species Act would, once again, require a fundamental shift away from oil and coal, and toward renewable energy, electric cars, smart buildings and developments. But coupled with the Clean Air Act, it is potentially a powerful tool for bringing about that change.

Such change can’t happen all at once, of course, but it is now incumbent on the government to help put a gradual shift in motion by providing incentives and rewards for the clean and green, and penalties for the dirty and wasteful. We have the laws to begin this process. We have the technologies to make it a reality. And so we have a decision to make, as a people, as a country, about how we want to proceed.

We have made changes in the past: we responded to the anti-littering campaign of the sixties and seventies by changing how we behave, cleaning up the litter from streets and roads and rivers seemingly overnight. We woke up and changed on smoking, and drinking and driving, too. Climate is the biggest challenge we have faced since World War II, but America has a history of rising to such challenges. We just need to figure out if we want to be the climate ostrich, or the hawk.