Three re-posts from Worldchanging caught ClearSky’s eye this week.  While we can’t see our greenhouse gas emissions, artists and writers continue to use their disciplines to reveal the impacts of our energy use.

Photograph: Black River Productions/Mitch Epstein, 2009

Artist Mitch Epstein:  Altamont Pass wind farm, California, 2007.  He also photographed many of the things that the Earth’s most energy-profligate nation does with that power – such as build golf courses in the desert.

Writer Eric De Place:  Equates US CO2 emissions to a BP-size leak every 3 hours.  BP’s Gulf oil spill is about five million barrels of oil total.  Compared to what the United States emits in greenhouse gas emissions, our carbon pollution is so huge that it’s like taking that five million barrels of oil, burning every drop of it, and then doing the same thing again every 2 hours and 41 minutes.

Photograph: Screenshot from Save Power

An advertising campaign used by the New South Wales government:  Utilizes the black balloon image, one black balloon contains 50g of carbon pollution, as part of it’s Save Power advertising campaign.

While ClearSky Climate Solutions found these posts on Worldchanging (see linked photos), Worldchanging found the original posts on We Make Money Not Art, Sightlines Daily Score, and Save Power.

ClearSky Climate Solutions is excited to be working on some innovative projects that avoid, or reverse, deforestation from the impending threat of deforestation.  These are exciting projects form a number of perspectives: improved local livelihoods for forest-dependent communities, improved biodiversity habitat via forest ecosystem conservation, improved local governance through transparent agreements on how to share carbon revenue and re-invest in the communities involved, and of course – the mitigation of emissions from deforestation that was slated to occur.  These are the kinds of holistic solutions that ClearSky is most interested in being a part of. 

Human caused climate change is, in fact, caused by human actions.  At ClearSky, if we can help find a way to more effectively manage humans – and their use of the natural resources they have access to – we believe we can more effectively address the emissions of greenhouse gases.  Humans are complicated and behave the way they do for many interconnected and correlated reasons.  Understanding how a solution to one community’s resource problem does not mean it is directly replicable in another community – but it is adding to the library of possibilities that can be leaned on in the future to craft new solutions.  REDD and REDD+ (avoided deforestation that includes a focus on sustainable development, community benefits and ecosystem/biodiversity benefits as well as greenhouse gas benefits) present a unique opportunity to merge numerous interests to solve common problems, with a market based approach. 

REDD/REDD+ are very interesting and potentially revolutionary, by merging ecosystem markets with community development and ecosystem conservation.  There are a number of unresolved, as yet, issues: what is the permanence of the carbon credits created by these projects?  What happens after the project life and crediting period that protects the forest into the future?  What about leakage – and the need for national level, forest carbon accounting standards?  What about the need for transparency in the distribution of financial benefits accruing to a project?  How does the project improve local communities and local governance? Will REDD also improve the forest-dependent peoples’ access to the forest for non-timber forest products, improve their training in value added processing, give them legal tenure claims on customary lands?  These and many other issues need to be cleared up at the international policy level and at the local project implementation level. 

The mere idea that REDD and REDD+ could have a potentially large impact in making the worlds forests worth more standing than they are cut – is exciting.  That the services that forests provide: carbon sinking, oxygen creating, biodiversity habitat holding, evapotranspiring-rain creating systems, soil fertility improving, flood water reducing and retaining are all valuable to the planets and the humans that inhabit it.  The fact that forests are reserves of genetic material, protein banks, seed libraries, spiritual retreats, and add much needed resilience to help stabilize the meteorological systems of our planet all make it easier for humans to live comfortably.  That is what the climate change question is really about……can we agree to make it relatively comfortable for the future generations of humans that will inhabit this little rock – 3rd from the sun?  The changes are evident before our eyes already.  What will we do about it? And how wonderful that there are options to address so many needs simultaneously, with REDD and REDD+ in our toolkits.

As jet-lag refuses to abate, I find myself writing this post at 4:40AM.  It is early morning in Cambodia, and I’m here to have a look at the new Avoided Deforestation project being designed in Northern Cambodia.  The Oddar Meanchey Community Forest REDD Project, implemented by The Forest Administration of Cambodia, Terra Global Capital, and Pact Inc.  There is a novel experiment happening in the forest of Cambodia – rural, forest-dependent communities are being engaged in the international carbon market in a way not previously seen.  Numerous communties along a river valley, that leads eventually to the Mekong River, are aggregating their good stewardship of their forests in an avoided deforestation project.  The rural communities are all being vested with secure land title from the national forestry authority.  This is something of great importance to the communities, and something they have never had.  It is also considered to be a lynchpin to achieving sustainable management by forest communities around the world.  If the people become owners of the lands, are they apt to manage it differently than if they are users of the forest?  That’s the question.  It is often taken for granted that a homeowner treats the home beter than a tenant renting the space.  Is that true of forests as well?

The accumulation of rural farming villages, tree resin collectors, and buddhist monks leading the various communities have aggregated their efforts to protect their forests.  It is now “their” forests.  In exchange for protection and monitoring, guarding and measuring their forests against threats of harvest from outside, the communities also hope to gain access to the voluntary carbon marketplace.  The project is in the finals stages of validation/verification under the Voluntary Carbon Standard.  It will soon generate revenues from the sale of carbon credits, which will be shared amongst the Forest Administration, TerraGlobal Capital and the communities themselves. 

ClearSky is keenly interested in seeing the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) carbon credit marketplace take off in a robust manner.  It has a unique opportunity to be a win-win-win scenario.  By intimately involving communities in the design/implementation and rewards of a carbon project, the carbon funds can bring about more secure livelihoods for forest-dependent peoples around the world.  At the same time, REDD proejcts can protect the atmosphere and climate regime as well as the forests and biodiversity from areas that have not been significantly impacted. 

If the experiment works – it can achieve numerous goals at the same time.  That is something well worth looking into!

A carbon offset represents a metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent that is either avoided or removed from the atmosphere.  The creation of a carbon offset involves the justification of a specific activity that goes above and beyond “business as usual.” Justification is awarded when outside parties agree that the project results in an overall benefit to our atmosphere, which would be easy if our industries, ecosystems, and atmosphere were all metered.  On the surface, one would think that purchasing carbon offsets would be a task void of decision making.  An apple is an apple, right?

To understand carbon offset basics and the variety that exists, read this June 2010 featured article in the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP) online journal, Insight:  http://bit.ly/az71AY

Climate mitigation, like all social and environmental movements, involves a change in our governance, cultural norms, education, and economy. Through purchase power a consumer can instigate minor shifts within each of these. The purchase of or investment in carbon offsets will continue to catalyze a reduction in GHG emissions in our atmosphere – if, like any other commodity, we are duly diligent and understand the characteristics, attributes, and features of what we buy.

The headlines may have escaped your attention last week, but the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just released their financial analysis of the American Power Act (APA) – a bill that has been proposed in the US Senate for reducing our nation’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  The APA aims to reduce US GHG pollution 17% by 2020 and 80% by 2050, through a combination of approaches including a cap-and-trade system for the electric power industry and tax incentives for renewable energy.

US climate change legislation is projected to cost less than $0.40 per day for US households - less than a postage stamp!

Over the next 40 years until 2050, the APA is projected to cost households an average of $79 to $146 per year.  That’s less than your Netflix^© subscription for a year, less than your cell phone bill for 3 months, and less than your grocery bill for 2 weeks.  And for households really focused on trimming spending during the tough economic situation, the EPA showed that the APA will actually reduce average energy bills during the next 10 years.

The bill’s sponsors, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), were very pleased by the EPA’s findings.  So were national environmental groups and businesses leaders.  Opponents of federal climate legislation have used scare tactics about potential outrageous costs of GHG regulation to support their reluctance, so how will they continue to stand in the way of our nation’s transition to a cleaner, greener future?  It’s time for all of us to rally behind clean energy legislation, while the cost is still cheap and the benefits are enormous!

There’s been a great surge of action among businesses who are eager to be responsible corporate citizens by measuring and reducing their carbon footprints.  ClearSky Climate Solutions has helped several businesses be completely carbon neutral, by measuring their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and retiring an equivalent number of certified carbon offsets to balance their carbon output.

Many businesses are going carbon neutral - but is it necessary?

Recently, a client of ours posed an interesting question: “Is it absolutely necessary to follow the fad and become a carbon-neutral business?”  The motivation behind this question wasn’t that they’re skeptical about climate change, or that they don’t feel a responsibility to reduce their company’s carbon footprint.  Rather, they were wondering if there is a level of GHG pollution that’s actually sustainable, given the fact that our earth’s natural processes are able to store a large quantity of CO2 every year.

This is an excellent question!  For example, the world’s oceans absorb ~2 Gt carbon/year.  We also know that forests have a huge potential to absorb carbon, but actually this sink is now a source of atmospheric carbon due to deforestation and land-use changes.  Fossil fuel burning contributes ~6 Gt carbon/year to the atmosphere.  Theoretically, then, we only need to reduce our global GHG emissions by 67% in order to achieve a sustainable level of CO2 emissions that the oceans could absorb, assuming that we can halt the problem of deforestation. If this is the case, then a business could reduce or offset 67% of their carbon footprint and claim to be atmospherically sustainable – right?

The issue with this approach is that the earth is already way over-budget in atmospheric carbon.   Global CO2 concentrations are currently 389 ppm, and scientific consensus says we need to reduce to 350 ppm in order to avoid significant temperature rise.  Also, the excess carbon that we’ve been emitting for the past 100 years has a very long residence time in the atmosphere, meaning that it’s not going to be absorbed very quickly.  Finally, those of us in the USA and Europe are responsible for the vast majority of the CO2 in the atmosphere, even if China has recently surpassed our rate of pollution.  Therefore, we don’t have the luxury of choosing a sustainable level of CO2 emissions – it’s our responsibility to reduce our carbon emissions as much as possible, as quickly as possible.  After reducing, offsetting the remaining carbon footprint and becoming  carbon neutral is one of the best ways for businesses to take full responsibility for their climate impacts.

In 2009, ClearSky was named the “Sustainable Business of the Year” by the Montana Sustainable Business Council (SBC).  Last Thursday, ClearSky entered into the winners’ circle, and was honored to announce this year’s award winner:  Biga Pizza of Missoula, MT.

Hip, hip, hurray for fennel, squash blossoms, chutneys, and pork shoulder!

Biga Pizza’s owner and chef, Bob Marshall, tries to obtain ingredients within 100 miles of Missoula whenever he can.  Biga works with local farms, food, and wine vendors – both to contribute to the local economy and for the quality of products.  To name a few:  Montana Flour and Grain, The Orchards at Flathead Lake, Clark Fork Organics, and Farm to Market Pork.  Sourcing local ingredients reduces the carbon footprint of his pizzas, by reducing the GHG emissions associated with ingredient transportation.

When asked how other restaurants can begin to source locally, Bob advised other proprietors to challenge what they were taught in school.

ClearSky Business Developer, Jon Kuennen, greeting guests at the 2010 SBC Awards Ceremony.

In his words, most chefs are taught in culinary school to begin a restaurant with a menu.  Contrary to this approach, Bob explained that he’s been able to source a lot of local food because he began his restaurant with a list of ingredients.  For example, you shouldn’t have surf and turf if you have no surf.

Biga is a dynamic local business working with constant regard for not only what they present on our plates, but also for the future of our atmosphere.  At ClearSky, we’re excited about their approach to sustainability, and we also love their pizzas.  Congrats Bob, you’re in the winners’ circle now!

With the newest climate change bill unveiled in the Senate last week, it has kick-started the same debate: to ’solve’ climate change or to focus on reviving the economy.  Interestingly, there are few actors in the policy and economic debate that view the two goals as linked.  However, bringing about a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions IS an economic development activity.  I find the inability to link the two goals in the news to be fascinating.  How is it possible that the US discourse can be so short-term?  How can the planet’s future ability to comfortably sustain human society be addressed by a system that has tremendous difficulty seeing beyond the next election cycle, the next fiscal-year, the fiscal quarter or the close of business stock price?  It is proving to be quite a challenge!

That said, the more bills that come out of the House and Senate, the better chance we have of joining the world in earnestly reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.  Having looked at the bill, and its predecesors, it comes nowhere close to the target set by the international scientific community.  But then, it appears that isn’t the goal of the first piece of climate change legislation in the US.  Instead, it appears that the goal is really to START….and to then adapt and fix it along the way.

As the long, heart-breaking process of watching the US Senate wrangle through another piece of climate legislation begins, it is a good time to reflect and take a deep breath.  As the teeth of the legislation become dull during the process, it is important to realize that TO START is the key.  To make the new societal baseline understanding, “one of action” appears to be the key.  After all, if the carbon market is still considered a key component of our response to climate change in 50 years – we will have missed the boat.  It is a great transitional tool, to leverage the efficiency of markets to achieve the common goal of reduced greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.  But the ultimate goal, transitioning off of a fossil fuel economy is the key to humanity’s response to this challenge.  The carbon market, and carbon offsets provide a unique opportunity to make the transition away from our fossil fuel addiction much easier and quicker – but the carbon offset, in and of itself, is not the solution.

I guess, understanding the ultimate goal and comparing that to the current state of debate – one can take heart that the debate has begun…….and NONE TOO SOON (and a little bit late)!!!

Another deep breath…….and a lot of work…..and we’ll change the world.

Keegan Eisenstadt

With this simple tool, you can estimate your personal or household greenhouse gas emissions for an entire year. Also, you can test how slight lifestyle changes could affect your climate footprint. We use established protocols and estimates from trusted data sources to calculate greenhouse gas emissions. All calculations are presented in metric tons of CO₂ equivalent/year or tons CO₂e/year.