With the Paris climate talks in full swing, COP21’s official photo streamoffers an inside look at the speeches, meetings, exhibits, and hangout spaces. Here are our favorites.
The Solar Sound System in the Climate Generations space of the conference. Photo courtesy of COP Paris.
The delegation of indigenous peoples express their opinions in the morning on the main walkway of COP21. Photo by Benjamin Géminel, courtesy of COP Paris.
Official opening ceremony of COP21. Photo by Arnaud Bouissou, courtesy of COP Paris.
Observers and groups of non-state actors committed to the climate listen to Laurent Fabius, President of COP21. Photo by Arnaud Bouissou, courtesy of COP Paris.
Press conference of the delegation of indigenous peoples. Photo by Benjamin Géminel, courtesy of COP Paris.
Critics of carbon pricing often forget that the approach isn’t meant to change the behaviour of the average Canadian, but of those on the so-called margin.
ILLUSTRATION BY IVY JOHNSON
By:Joseph Heath, reposted from TheStar, Dec 6, 2015
Since the government of Alberta announced its intention to implement a carbon tax, there has been a sudden burst of skepticism, of commentators claiming that carbon pricing schemes are ineffective. Critics from both right and left — from Margaret Wente to Naomi Klein — have claimed that the incentives provided by a carbon price are too weak to constitute an effective response to a problem as extensive and as severe as global climate change.
My experience has been that, when you get into a debate with people about climate change, this is always the last-ditch argument. Critics usually start out claiming that carbon pricing “commodifies nature,” or that it constitutes a “tax on everything.” After you explain why this doesn’t make any sense, they reach for the backup argument: “Anyhow, they don’t work” — as in, carbon taxes, or a cap-and-trade system, won’t actually reduce consumption of fossil fuels.
This is the line that Stephen Harper clung to during the past electoral campaign — whenever he was pressed to provide a rational basis for his opposition to carbon taxes, he claimed that they would not work.
Actually, the first time I heard this argument was from a Suncor representative, who put it to me something like this: “For your typical Canadian, a five- or 10-cent increase in the price of gas isn’t going to get them to stop driving.”
Of course, for anyone who wants to know what the facts are, it’s pretty easy to find data on this. There are literally hundreds of studies. Economists calculate something called the “price elasticity of demand” of various goods, which represents the percentage change in consumption that one can expect, in response to a certain percentage change in price. What Harper, as well as my friend from Suncor, were claiming is that the price elasticity of gasoline is zero. This is categorically false.
When one looks at the studies in the aggregate, it turns out the average finding is that the short-term price elasticity of gasoline is approximately 0.25, which means that a 10-per-cent price increase in gasoline results in a 2.5-per-cent reduction in the amount consumed. This is relatively inelastic, as one would expect, given that many people are locked into their current patterns of consumption, particularly their commuting routine, which accounts for a large portion of their gasoline spending.
As a result, economists also estimate the long-term price elasticity. It turns out — again, as one would expect — that during periods of less than a year, elasticity is 0.25, but that afterwards it increases to 0.6 on average. In other words, a price increase of 10 per cent, after a year or more, results in a decline in consumption of around 6 per cent.
One can see obvious reasons why this might be so. Over time, people move around a lot. When people decide where to live, they sit down and do the math (indeed, they are forced to sit down and do the math, by their mortgage lender) to figure out exactly how much house they can afford. When determining how much they can borrow, they must calculate all of their other expenses, including commuting costs. This is not a negligible sum, since many suburban households spend $300-$400 per month on gasoline. Changing the price of gasoline affects these calculations, which then starts to generate effects over the long term, as people buy new cars, and more consequentially, as they change houses. Unsurprisingly, studies have shown that an increase in gasoline prices reduces demand for houses in outer suburbs.
This is very straightforward. There is, however, a more subtle point, which professional economists take for granted, but that is often lost on the rest of us. It explains what is wrong with my friend from Suncor’s intuition that a carbon tax will be ineffective, because it will not change the behaviour of the average Canadian. The correct response is to observe that it is not supposed to change the behaviour of the average Canadian. Its effects will be felt at what economists refer to as “the margin.” Indeed, the tendency to focus on the average consumer, rather than the marginal one, is one of the major reasons that non-economists get confused about how the economy works.
So what is this mysterious “margin”?
The concept arises from the observation that people’s willingness to pay for things varies considerably, and yet most of the time companies have to charge everyone the same price. For example, I’m willing to pay $8 or $9 for a good breakfast, but when I go to McDonald’s I get charged $5 like everyone else. That’s because McDonald’s is pricing its breakfast with two competing objectives in mind, the first is to sell them at a profit, but the second is to sell as many of them as possible.
The company’s math tells them that they can make more money selling a very large number of breakfasts at $5 than they can selling a much smaller number at $6 or $7. That’s because, by dropping the price from $6 to $5, they bring in a new batch of customers — people for whom $6 is actually too much to pay for breakfast, but $5 is just right. These are the marginal consumers. And it is the behaviour of these marginal consumers that actually drives the movement of prices in a market economy.
Now suppose you work somewhere in middle management at McDonald’s, and you go to your boss with a great new idea. “Hey,” you say, “we should charge more for breakfast. Maybe $6. After all, the average Canadian is not going to stop eating at McDonald’s, just because the price of breakfast goes up by a dollar.”
Anyone who understands business can see right away that this is a stupid suggestion — even if you’re right that the average Canadian can afford to pay $6 for breakfast. The point is that it’s not about the average Canadian, it’s about the marginal Canadian. If McDonald’s raised the price of their breakfast by $1, they would lose business, because there are some people who could no longer afford that, or who would not longer regard it as a “deal,” and so would go elsewhere, or would just stay home and eat cereal.
The story with carbon taxes is exactly the same. Just as I am willing to pay $8 for breakfast, I would probably pay $2 or more per litre for gasoline. After all, I make a good salary and I don’t do much discretionary driving. But this just goes to show that I’m not the marginal consumer of gasoline. There are, however, many people who are driving, right now, only because gasoline prices have been averaging around $1 per litre. Raise that price by five or 10 cents, and they will actually drive less. This may seem unlikely, but a moment’s reflection shows that it must be true — if it isn’t, then gas companies have been mispricing their product.
This is the major reason that armchair pundits tend to get it wrong, when it comes to estimating the effects of carbon prices. They look at their own consumption habits and figure it wouldn’t make much difference to their own bottom line. But in thinking about things this way, they misunderstand one of the most fundamental features of how a market economy operates. Carbon prices will work, for exactly the same reason that capitalism as a whole works — because both consumers and businesses respond to the incentives that prices provide at the margin. SOURCE
Joseph Heath is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto.
Commission chairman Justice Murray Sinclair speaks at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 2, 2015. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
It was a massive undertaking. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission travelled across the country for six years, visiting more than 300 communities and listening to thousands of residential school survivors.
They told their stories one by one, some for the very first time.
“We understood from that moment, very deeply, not only the significance of what we were doing but the sacredness of it.”- Justice Murray Sinclair
Justice Murray Sinclair said he quickly recognized the great responsibility that came with collecting these stories.
The chair of the TRC recalled a young woman from Kuujjuaq, Nunavik who attended one of many gatherings. She cried while listening to survivor testimony before sharing her own story. One of growing up with a father who was deeply affected by his experience at residential school.
She spoke about his addictions, his violence, his inability to show love or affection and, ultimately, his suicide.
“She spoke for all the intergenerational survivors who said that they now understood that one of the most important acts of reconciliation for the survivors was to be forgiven,” Sinclair said.
The TRC collected more than 7,000 survivor stories and millions of documents, a legacy now in the care of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
Indoctrination through Christianity
But Sinclair said learning the truth about the schools is just beginning.
St. Michael’s Indian Residential School in Alert Bay, B.C., is shown in a 1970 photo. (Library and Archives Canada/The Canadian Press)
“The schools were not about education,” he said. “The schools were about indoctrination.”
In 1883, Sir John A. McDonald’s government intentionally built the schools far away from families and communities, as a way to assimilate indigenous children into mainstream Christian society.
He called this indoctrination the driving force behind the schools that dotted the country from coast to coast to coast for over 100 years.
“[McDonald said] if we leave them to attend schools in their communities we will only end up with savages who can read and write,” Sinclair explained.
A typical day began at dawn with children being forced to pray for 30 minutes before and after breakfast. Then came instruction in mathematics, reading and writing.
Sinclair said teachers were not trained or certified in any way and there wasn’t even a curriculum in the schools until after World War II. He explained most former students could not write when they finished school, nor could they apply their residential school education toward university or college.
It is from this environment that children grew into broken adults, many marred by abuse, others mired in addiction. They also carried what they learned in residential school, a message that Indigenous Peoples were inferior to Europeans. A message, stressed Sinclair, that was also being taught to non-indigenous children.
“That created a very powerful schism within indigenous and non-indigenous Canada,” he said. “We reminded people that… reconciliation is not an indigenous problem, it is for all of Canada.”
“We have all been taught to believe in aboriginal inferiority and European superiority and that’s wrong.”- Justice Murray Sinclair
Education key to reconciliation
Sinclair said that education will provide the best solutions to healing that schism.
The TRC recommends the history of residential schools be added to all education material so that future generations know the story.
“But in addition to that, the way that schools treat indigenous history also needs to be reevaluated and rethought and recast,” Sinclair said.
He explained the beginning of history for Canadian students generally begins with the arrival of Europeans. “There’s no history taught about the period before 1492 and that’s crazy because there’s a whole rich history there that we should be talking about,” he said.
The TRC’s 94 recommendations
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission will present its final report on the history and legacy of Canada’s residential school system on Dec. 15 in Ottawa.
Its summary report was released in June and made 94 recommendations, including ones calling for changes to policies and programs.
Sinclair said while many of the calls to action are echoed in other reports like the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and Manitoba’s Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, it is ultimately about reconciliation.
Justin Trudeau hugs Elder Evelyn Commanda-Dewache, a residential school survivor, during the closing ceremony of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 3, 2015. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
“Reconciliation turns on this concept: I want to be your friend and I want you to be mine and if we are friends then I’ll have your back when you need it and you’ll have mine.”
Sinclair added that all Canadians must be part of this journey, whether they are connected to its history or not.
“I really don’t care if you feel responsible for the past. The real question is do you feel a sense of responsibility for the future because that’s what this is all about.” SOURCE
Climate change negotiations were set to continue into the Paris night Friday amid an unfolding battle over including a reference to Indigenous peoples in the final text of the expected global agreement.
Chief Wilton Littlechild, who recently returned from Paris, said he was hopeful the final text of the climate change agreement would include a reference to Indigenous people.
Littlechild, whose experience in UN negotiations stems back to his time helping to write the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, said there’s been a back and forth between countries as to what to include in the final agreement.
“Yesterday (Thursday) we were in serious danger of (a reference to Indigenous peoples) being deleted, but now we are back in,” said Littlechild, in an interview with APTN National News.
A report Friday from a delegate in Paris stated the reference to Indigenous peoples was still in limbo, but negotiations were expected to continue into the night.
Representatives from about 150 countries, along with about 40,000 delegates from about 195 countries, are currently negotiation a new global agreement on climate change at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris. Part of the negotiations aim to create a global agreement on climate change so the planet’s warming does not surpass 2C above temperature levels that existed before the industrial revolution.
Indigenous peoples in Canada are already feeling the brunt of environmental changes caused by climate change. Canada is currently warming at twice the global average, but warming is occurring at an even higher rates in the North.
The Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut are already starting to notice extensive permafrost melting which creating increasingly widespread infrastructure problems.
As part of a wider change in tone, Canada has been one of the leading global voices on the importance of including Indigenous peoples in proposed solutions to combat climate change. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was only one of two world leaders to mention Indigenous peoples during speeches at the conference, said Littlechild.
Littlechild said Canada and the U.S. both supported the reference to Indigenous peoples in the text. When the paragraph that included the reference was expanded to include human rights, women’s rights, gender rights and a mention of “occupied territories,” the U.S. and other states began to express resistance.
The move threatened to basically sever the reference to Indigenous peoples from the text, said Littlechild.
Then a proposal was put on the table to move a reference to Indigenous peoples into the preamble of the text’s final agreement, which Littlechild said would have allayed some of the concerns.
“There were some states who did not want to refer to collective rights, then that meant deleting Indigenous peoples rights,” said Littlechild. “So there was a lot of negotiating strategies that were being adopted by a number of states. At the end of the day Canada supported our position that it should be the rights of indigenous peoples.”
Littlechild said negotiations still have a long way to go.
The chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) Okalik Eegeesiak, one of delegates attending COP21 on behalf of the Inuit in Paris said climate change is not just an environmental issue, but also one about human rights.
“The melting of the Arctic is impacting all aspects of Inuit life therefore the final text must make the rights of Indigenous peoples operative and keep it in….We have the right to be cold” said Eegeesiak, in a statement.
A First Nations woman representing her home community of Beaver Lake Cree Nation in Alberta as an Indigenous delegate also expressed concern with the way things were unfolding. She said the removal of the operative paragraph in Article 2.2 signified the erasure of the existence of Indigenous peoples and front line communities.
“Here we sit on the outside as the worlds states debate and decide where our rights fit,” said Crystal Lameman. “The issue we take as Indigenous peoples is that our rights are founded in the rights of nature which is the essence of who we are and the very existence of our ways of knowing and being …We belong in this treaty, we have a place in this discussion. Our future and that of our children is not up for negotiation.”
The negotiations are expect to conclude on Dec. 11. The climate change talks began in earnest on Nov. 30. SOURCE
Close to 1,000 mayors from five continents gathered at the Paris City Hall Friday to sign a historic agreement on climate change measures.
The mayors, including the City of Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson, pledged to support such long-term climate goals as a transition to 100 per cent renewable energy in their communities or an 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050. On Thursday, the City of Vancouver was honoured in Paris by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group for the Greenest City Action Plan.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo with Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. Photo from twitter.
“We recognize that human-caused climate change already harms millions of citizens and its impact will last for decades,” read the declaration in part the mayors signed.
“Continuing on the same high greenhouse gas emissions trajectory will result in disaster for our children, the environment and global biodiversity. Climate change action is the only path forward.”
Among the pledges the mayors made are to advance and exceed the expected goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement; and to produce and put in place resilience strategies and action plans to adapt to the rising incidence of climate-related hazards by 2020.
The mayors also promised to deliver up to a 3.7 gigatons reduction of urban greenhouse gas emission reductions annually by 2030.
Leonardo DiCaprio implored other mayors to join in emissions reductions
The gathering took place at the Bloomberg Philanthropies-sponsored event, Cities for Climate.
Jessy Tolkan, director of the digital climate change campaign group Here Now, told National Observer that in her opinion the local leaders’ summit may have been one of the most significant days of the two weeks in Paris.
Speaking from Paris, Tolkan said, “While it’s critically important the COP21 deliver a strong binding agreement for the nations of the world, the reality is the nearly 1,000 mayors in attendance at today’s event can contribute to more than 50 per cent of the solution we facing from climate change.”
The actor and environmentalist, Leonardo DiCaprio, addressed the mayors, telling them: “Model cities like Vancouver, Sydney, Stockholm and Las Vegas have already committed to using 100 per cent renewable energy in the coming decades.
“So to all the mayors and governors in this room today, I implore you to join with your peers to commit to moving to no less than 100 per cent renewable energy as soon as possible. Do not wait another day.”
While the declaration was short on details as to how the cities would accomplish their goals, it did set out that the jurisdictions would need increased access to climate finance, budget authority and stronger legislative capacity.
The declaration called on every level of government to make its maximum potential contribution toward climate change progress.
Vancouver picked up top honours for its Greenest City Action Plan
“The mayors today set out the bold ambition,” Tolkan said. “If the negotiators from all the nations around the world are able to take the lead from mayors like Canadian Mayor Gregor Robertson from Vancouver, and the Mayors of Sydney and Copenhagen, then we’re headed to really making some history and combating this biggest challenge that’s ever faced humanity.”
It’s unclear how many other Canadian cities signed the declaration.
The third annual C40 Cities Awards provides global recognition for cities leading in policies and programs that reduce emissions and improve sustainability.
This year more than 200 applicants from 94 cities globally competed for the award. Vancouver was among the 33 finalists.
The Greenest City Action plan is a guide to helping Vancouver achieve ambitious targets in 10 goal areas ranging from climate leadership to zero waste. SOURCE
This map shows the location of seawater samples taken by scientists and citizen scientists that were analyzed at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for radioactive cesium as part of Our Radioactive Ocean. Cesium-137 is found throughout the Pacific Ocean and was detectable in all samples collected, while cesium-134 (yellow/orange dots), an indicator of contamination from Fukushima, has been observed offshore and in select coastal areas. Credit: Jessica Drysdale, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, reposted from phys.org, Dec 3, 2015
Scientists monitoring the spread of radiation in the ocean from the Fukushima nuclear accident report finding an increased number of sites off the US West Coast showing signs of contamination from Fukushima. This includes the highest detected level to date from a sample collected about 1,600 miles west of San Francisco. The level of radioactive cesium isotopes in the sample, 11 Becquerel’s per cubic meter of seawater (about 264 gallons), is 50 percent higher than other samples collected along the West Coast so far, but is still more than 500 times lower than US government safety limits for drinking water, and well below limits of concern for direct exposure while swimming, boating, or other recreational activities.
Ken Buesseler, a marine radiochemist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and director of the WHOI Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity, was among the first to begin monitoring radiation in the Pacific, organizing a research expedition to the Northwest Pacific near Japan just three months after the accident that started in March 2011. Through a citizen science sampling effort, Our Radioactive Ocean, that he launched in 2014, as well as research funded by the National Science Foundation, Buesseler and his colleagues are using sophisticated sensors to look for minute levels of ocean-borne radioactivity from Fukushima. In 2015, they have added more than 110 new samples in the Pacific to the more than 135 previously collected and posted on the Our Radioactive Ocean web site.
“These new data are important for two reasons,” said Buesseler. “First, despite the fact that the levels of contamination off our shores remain well below government-established safety limits for human health or to marine life, the changing values underscore the need to more closely monitor contamination levels across the Pacific. Second, these long-lived radioisotopes will serve as markers for years to come for scientists studying ocean currents and mixing in coastal and offshore waters.”
The recent findings reported by Buesseler agree with those reported by scientists who are part of the group Kelp Watch and by the team of Canadian scientists working under the InFORM umbrella. While Buesseler’s work focuses on ocean chemistry and does not involve sampling of biological organisms, the InFORM scientists have done sampling of fish and have not seen any Fukushima cesium in fish collected in British Columbia.
Almost any seawater sample from the Pacific will show traces of cesium-137, an isotope of cesium with a 30-year half-life, some of which is left over from nuclear weapons testing carried out in the 1950s to 1970s. The isotope cesium-134 is the “fingerprint” of Fukushima, but, with a 2-year half-life, it decays much quicker than cesium-137. Scientists back calculate traces of cesium-134 to determine how much was actually released from Fukushima in 2011 and add to it an equal amount of cesium-137 that would have been released at the same time.
Working with Japanese colleagues, Buesseler also continues to independently monitor the ongoing leaks from Fukushima Dai-ichi by collecting samples from as close as one kilometer (one-half mile) away from the nuclear power plants. During his most recent trip this October they collected samples of ocean water, marine organisms, seafloor sediment and groundwater along the coast near the reactors. Buesseler says the levels of radioactivity off Fukushima remain elevated - some 10 to 100 times higher than off the US West Coast today, and he is working with colleagues at WHOI to try to determine how much radioactive material is still being released to the ocean each day.
“Levels today off Japan are thousands of times lower than during the peak releases in 2011. That said, finding values that are still elevated off Fukushima confirms that there is continued release from the plant,” said Buesseler.
Buesseler will present his latest findings on the spread of Fukushima radiation at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco on Dec. 14, 2015.
The first question that crossed my mind when reading about the latest Bill Gates investment venture was “is this a cover to divert yet more money into nuclear energy?” Gates unveiled his Breakthrough Energy Coalition at the start of the COP21 climate talks in Paris with much fanfare but few details, including the size of the financial commitment.
My suspicions were triggered not only by Gates’ already public commitment to nuclear energy research, but by the name selected for this collection of 28 of the world’s richest people (mainly men.) The Breakthrough Institute, after all, is the name of the pseudo-green nuclear energy front group whose people promoted and starred in the 2013 nuclear power propaganda film, Pandora’s Promise. But so far the Breakthrough Institute is lying low on the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, although I suspect not for long.
At first glance, the mission of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, whose collective wealth is three hundred and fifty billion dollars, sounds reasonable enough, even if it takes a while to get ones head around that kind of disposable income. “The world needs widely available energy that is reliable, affordable and does not produce carbon,” the group states. The investors aim to provide “early-stage capital for technologies that offer promise in bringing affordable clean energy to billions of people, especially in the developing world.” All quite noble. But the madness is in the method.
“The only way to accomplish that goal is by developing new tools to power the world. That innovation will result from a dramatically scaled up public research pipeline linked to truly patient, flexible investments committed to developing the technologies that will create a new energy mix,” the Coalition website states.
Salesforce.com founder, Marc Benioff, a Coalition member, opined in a Washington Post article by Joby Warrick that: “We’re facing the rising danger of climate change, and it has become clear to me that the solution will require significant innovation.”
More research? More innovation? Why? The chump change of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition members could, on a massive scale, deploy wind, solar and geothermal energy, technologies that are not waiting to be invented. They are ready now and lack only the political willpower to implement. And it’s deployment we so desperately need. Why throw more money into “patient” research? Surely they understand we no longer have the luxury of time?
So who are these guys and what are they really up to? A review of Coalition members yields a mixed bag full of red flags proudly flying the radiation symbol. Gates is already squandering part of his wealth on Terra Power LLC, a nuclear design and engineering company seeking an elusive, expensive and futile so-called Generation IV traveling wave reactor that can never deliver electricity in time.
Mukesh Ambani is an investor in Terra Power. Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, is betting his money on the perpetually-40-years-away nuclear fusion dream, which, even if it were ever to work, will be far too expensive to apply to developing countries.
Virgin Group founder, Richard Branson, publicly touts nuclear energy and put his name on Pandora’s Promise as executive producer. “We should continue to develop advanced nuclear power to add to the mix,” he said in promoting the film via the Breakthrough Institute’s website. (See our debunk of the film’s numerous errors of fact and omission.)
Chris Hohn’s TCI hedge fund invested in J-Power, a Japanese utility company whose assets included nuclear power stations. In 2008, the Japanese government barred TCI from increasing its stake in J-Power and the hedge fund withdrew.
Vinod Khosla loves nuclear power and is on record blaming environmentalists rather than nuclear energy’s obviously disastrous economics, for its failure. “Most new power plants in this country are coal, because the environmentalists opposed nuclear,” Khosla said in a 2008 interview.
Chinese billionaire Jack Ma of Alibaba, was recently brought onto British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Business Advisory Group, probably not coincidentally one day before a state visit by the Chinese president to seal a deal involving China’s investment in the UK’s planned Hinkley-C nuclear power plant.
Ratan Tata’s eponymous corporation leapt at the chance of investing in nuclear energy in India with the passage of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty-violating U.S.-India deal.
Others in the group have less obvious connections with energy or climate change and there is one clear nuclear opponent in Japan’s Masayoshi Son, founder, chairman and CeO of SoftBank Group Corp., whose epiphany after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster prompted him to become an outspoken critic of nuclear power and an advocate for renewable energy. Others in the group appear to share interests in renewable energy.
Perhaps the Breakthrough Billionaires Club will yet come to the realization that from a clean energy generation perspective we have already broken through. The innovations needed are not in abstract research but in deployment. The Breakthrough Energy Coalition must tear itself away from the fascination of tinkering in a laboratory and instead do something real, practical and hands-on with their money. However, the group’s assertion that “the foundation of this program must be large funding commitments for basic and applied research,” does not provide much reason for optimism.
A tennis coach I used to know would tell his team after a loss that “breakdowns come before breakthroughs.” We’ve caused the climate breakdown and we’ve made the energy breakthroughs. Now we just need to start winning. The Breakthrough Energy Coalition could and should be on that team. SOURCE
