Climate and energy

Over the last year in Kansas, I have heard one sentiment again and again: Climate change is a global problem – it requires a global response.

Well, reporting from the Governors’ Global Climate Summit, I have great news: the globe is responding!

Checking in to the conference, I was handed a translation headset. Next to me, someone asked, “Do I really need this?” To which the cheerful response came: “Do you speak Mandarin, Hindi, Portuguese, Spanish, and Bahasa Indonesia?” We did not – we took the headsets.

Here to discuss goals (they all have them!), programs (ditto), successes and lessons from their efforts are governors from the fastest-developing nations in the world, including Mexico, Brazil, India, Indonesia – all of whom are dramatically less prosperous than the United States and are acting decisively to manage their climate risk.

Also here are Ministers of Environment from Canadian provinces, numerous representatives of the European Union and, crucially, the Director General, Department of Climate Change, National Development Reform Commission from the People’s Republic of China.

Food for thought:

China: 600 million Chinese are expected to move from the countryside to cities by 2030. Two times the entire U.S. population will need new places to live and work in a mere twenty years. So, China is devising and finding ways to enforce energy efficient building standards, to build efficient mass transportation and further lower vehicle carbon intensity (already significantly lower than the U.S.), to dramatically increase the efficiency of their traditional power generation and add massive new renewable capacity. They have begun a massive national ghg inventory so that they can measure their reductions.

Mexico: Mexico’s voluntary registry of greenhouse gases covers fourteen industries and 80% of emissions. Soon greenhouse gases will be added to the mandatory Toxic Release Registry. Mexico has a National Special Plan for Climate Change, and the President has made climate action a priority. Mexico’s representative here said “We can achieve lower carbon intensity very soon, very cost effectively.”

President-elect Obama: in a video made for this conference, said “My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process.” He called for a national cap-and-trade system that will “establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80% by 2050.” His closing: “I promise you this: When I am president, any governor who’s willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that’s willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that’s willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America.”

Kansans, have no fear of acting alone. Put to rest your worries about industry migrating to countries who are not managing their carbon risk – there will soon be virtually nowhere to go.

Here, amid unfamiliar languages and determined leaders, I have witnessed the dawn of a new day. We’ll see it soon in Kansas. This day inspires new thinking, real innovation, and cheerful determination – and it ushers in a new, sustained prosperity.

Henry Ford – a good, practical, visionary Midwesterner – is fabled to have said, “If I had asked the people what they wanted, they would have said they wanted a faster horse.”

Let’s embrace a new vision and, together, let’s get to work!