Hertsgaard: It's Worse Than You Think

Environmental author Mark Hertsgaard spoke at the San Francisco Department of Environment today. He has come to believe we are so far down the global warming road and its consequences that the time has come to move beyond mitigation to focus on adaptation. Of course, he said, every effort must continue to move toward a zero-carbon economy, but we need to get our collective head around the idea that our carbon emissions have warmed up the earth, and it's going to get even warmer. We can still make it worse, but we can't make it stop. More Katrina's. Summers hotter than the killer of 50,000 in Europe a few years ago.

Hertsgaard says environmental leaders shudder at the poltical consequences of such knowledge. Will everyone stop replacing their lightbulbs and stop buying hybrids if the next generations are screwed regardless?

I think the question enviros face isn't what doomsday timeline will optimally motivate policy-makers, industry or everyday people. Excepting our disgraced President, it is now conventional wisdom that global warming is real. When Shell Oil's CEO finally believes it's real, as he apparently does, the debate is over, Hertsgaard said,

The question is what are the best policies to support. And this is where we are being let down by environmental leadership, at least as regards transportation. The young man who rang my doorbell for Environment California this evening should have been more than a naive enthusiast for wind and solar and more efficient cars. He could have been an advocate for creating that renewable power and putting it into cars. Killing two birds with one stone, pardon the murderous cliche.

The end game is the cleanest, most renewable power possible for everything. Realistically, the only way we get renewable power into millions of cars is with grid electricity. GM has just given environmentalists a opening with its plug-in hybrid announcement.

GM is rumored to have yet another announcement regarding what Waggoner called "the electrification of the automobile" at the Detroit Auto Show in January. Will Toyota let GM be first to market with a plug-in?