Category Archives: Food system

Climate Reality Leadership Training–One Year After

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By Steve Schaefer

Me in the circle-edited

August, 2018 in Los Angeles

The certificate on my wall from the Climate Reality Leadership Corps training carries today’s date—August 30—from 2018. One year ago, I spent three powerful days in Los Angeles with Al Gore and 2,200 other people learning and bonding. I left with a mission. What have I done this year? What’s changed? What should I do better or more of in the coming year? Here’s what I said then.

In the last 12 months, I’ve met and worked with the local Climate Reality chapter, put solar panels on my roof, given four climate presentations, performed 30 Acts of Leadership (including writing blog posts), attended an important clean energy conference, built up my reference library, focused my auto writing on EVs, and even changed jobs to work at a company focused on sustainable mobility.

Local Climate Reality Chapters

I had already met my climate mentor, Wei-Tai Kwok, and joined the Climate Reality Bay Area chapter before my training.  When I returned, I continued my participation, along with my training mentor and chapter co-leader, Steve Richard. As part of the drive for more climate action, local Climate Reality Project chapters bring people together. Some of us from the Los Angeles training have continued to work on events and actions, and we have brought in others, including interested people who have not yet spent three days with Mr. Gore. The Bay Area chapter is now one of the largest in the country, with more than 600 members.

After I got back from training, I proposed a monthly chapter newsletter, and as part of the Operations team, I have produced them monthly since November 2018. It’s a focused bit of information gathering, editing, and processing in Mailchimp once a month, but it does get read, and helps move people to action, so I’m glad to do it.

Solar on My Roof

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Immediately upon returning home, I got the first of four quotes on solar panels for my roof. After four bids, I chose one and signed a contract in November. On April 22, 2019—Earth Day—my panels were finally installed. Now, the electric car I’ve driven for more than two-and-a-half years is powered by sunshine. My utility bill has dropped to next to nothing, too (by about the amount of my solar panel bill every month).

Climate Presentations

Former Vice President Al Gore began the Climate Reality Climate Leadership Corps in 2006 to train others to present his famous slideshow. Adding thousands of trained leaders makes it easier to spread the word, since despite his award-winning films and bestselling books, Mr. Gore can’t be everywhere at once. When Gore delivers the training, by the way, he’s with you nearly the entire time.

Besides presentations, trained Climate Leaders perform Acts of Leadership, which can include writing a blog, attending an event, contacting political leaders, and other efforts to move the climate crisis dialog along.

I’ve given four presentations, with varying degrees of response. I believe that more is always better, but I understand there is also a ramp-up. I attended a helpful chapter-sponsored bootcamp session where I learned about presenting and also about seeking out opportunities.

Presenting is not difficult for me. I’m not nervous in front of an audience and am a total extrovert. I just wish that the crowds could be bigger. In September 2018, not long after the training, my first talk was to people at my company, to introduce the National Drive Electric Week (NDEW) event I was hosting for the second year in a row. The 20-25 people seemed to appreciate the message, and I gained some practice in front of a friendly crowd. I’m attending the NDEW event in Cupertino, CA this year, but not hosting one.

Because my special focus is electric vehicles, I have added a little “infomercial” at the end of my climate talks, and that’s the section I delivered when I co-presented with a very experienced fellow chapter member, Gary White, to a nice big roomful of college students.

My third presentation was at a church in Palo Alto, where my message was familiar and appreciated—somewhat preaching to the choir, as that community is in the forefront of green energy adoption.

The fourth talk was at my local public library. Despite fliers in the library and a listing in the local paper, I got fewer than 10 attendees! I did give them a good show, though. You have to be a pro and learn something from every talk.

My next scheduled presentation will be on November 21st as part of the 24 Hours of Climate Action.  That’s Mr. Gore’s special project this year. He usually does a 24-hour show, like a Jerry Lewis Telethon. This year, he’s asking climate leaders across the world to present at the same time, making it the largest climate education event ever.

I’ll be addressing my company—a different one since last year. My new employer, Ridecell, develops and sells software to power carsharing and ridesharing fleets, and also has an autonomous vehicle division. I’m finally working in a business that moves towards electric and shared mobility.

Acts of Leadership

I’ve performed 30 recorded acts of leadership this year in addition to the four presentations. My acts have included attending events, writing climate-themed blog posts, and contacting leaders. I have certainly done more than the required minimum, but I would like to do more. I don’t count my normal electric vehicle reviews, since I would do them anyway, but any of my blog posts that are directly climate-related I do. I’ve attended events with speakers at Acterra in Palo Alto and written up those stories, which helped spread the word on various climate issues, including the food system and electric car adoption.

Working toward Sustainability

Last October, I attended a day of the VERGE sustainability conference in Oakland, put on by Greenbiz. While there, I attended panels, but also interviewed three industry executives, which led to three published articles. This October, I’m signed up again, and will hope to attend two or even three days. It’s an amazing event—in its own way as powerful as the Climate Reality training.

I have continued my vigorous recycling efforts, but also found a few items that represented reuse. I ordered new glasses frames made from sea plastic from www.sea2see.org. I also bought a hand-made bass guitar crafted from recycled Brazilian teak wood from a deck. These are small ways to help clean up our mess and also reduce energy use.

Building a Reference Library

I already had some books in my library when I attended training, but I now have more than 50. I have read many but not all of them. I’m currently in David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth—a truly sobering treatise on what we have to look forward to in the 21st Century. I have recently read Bill McKibben’s Falter, about whether mankind may be not only ruining the climate, but meaningful life. Books like Acorn Days, about the founding and growth of the Environmental Defense Fund, were easier to take.

My library includes a textbook called Power Driven Technologies that I started when I got back from the training last year and plan to complete to further educate myself on the realities of the way we generate power in the world today. I have books on eating clean, recycling, and much more. Of course, I have both of the An Inconvenient Truth books, as well as two other Al Gore books. On my Kindle, I have Earth in the Balance—Gore’s first groundbreaking book, which came out before he was elected VP. My Kindle books also include Jeremy Rifkin’s The Third Industrial Revolution and Justine Burt’s excellent The Great Pivot from this year.

Electric Vehicles Only, Please

As a weekly auto columnist since early 1992, I’ve tested more than 1,300 vehicles for a week at a time. After the training, I gave up on gasoline-only cars. I now test only EVs and hybrids, and I will drop the hybrids at some point. However, that means I get fewer test vehicles and write fewer stories now, as the journalist fleet is still mostly petrol-based cars. I am not interested in promoting gas-burners anymore. See my auto writing at www.cleanfleetreport.com.

2-year-horizontal

I have driven my Chevrolet Bolt EV now for most of its three-year lease period, racking up about 25,000 miles when I’m not testing another car. It has been wonderful, with only the need to have the battery replaced (at no cost) marring the perfection. Now, I’m seeking its successor. There are more choices now, but in the interest of cost saving, I’m considering picking up a used EV. That will limit my range, unfortunately, but the low cost of even a 2016 model EV makes them great entry points for anyone to move to electric.

New Friendships

I’ve built some new friendships this year. The Climate Reality Bay Area chapter has more than 600 members now. About half of them are not trained, and I wonder how “sticky” their membership will be, but at this point, whoever raises a hand is welcomed to the group.

The Sad Truth

It’s exciting to be part of this crucial and historic move to save our planet from the climate crisis. But this is not just some hobby or fraternal organization. The truth is, the climate crisis is deadly serious, yet despite increased climate crisis news coverage and awareness, most people are not doing much of anything about it.

Even I, who have attended Climate Reality Training, read at least half of my dozens of books, absorbed innumerable news reports, read the digests of the IPCC and EPA reports, and truly believe we are in a crisis, often find it hard to act on what I’m hearing. As I look around, I see that we are very busy with our families, jobs, personal interests, and cell phones. I have a wife, two grown sons, and two granddaughters. I also have musical passion, playing bass in bands and orchestras. I enjoy a good beer. I better understand now why Mr. Gore called it “An Inconvenient Truth.” Although I may understand the situation, sometimes I don’t really want to accept it.

How can we all work together to make the impact we need to keep the temperatures from climbing to where they kill us? I have considered this as I work on my presentations and as I talk with people about the climate crisis. I usually wear my Climate Reality logo cap and my green circle pin on my jacket, and the subject comes up. But, truly, even If I am aware and trying to make a real effort, much of the time I’m not. Why can’t I give up all my distractions and focus exclusively on saving the world? I don’t know, but I can’t—at least now.

At 66 years old, I plan to continue working on climate matters, aiming toward the time when I can “retire “and spend all day writing and working with organizations that directly influence the climate crisis. My current company is doing that, but eventually I will do even more. I’ll contact my elected leaders (and do whatever I can to get rid the denier in the White House!). With children and grandchildren who will bear more of this problem than I will, this is no longer about me. And it’s not just my family—it’s everyone. I can’t sit idle while the earth burns.

The Great Pivot, by Justine Burt

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A book review by Steve Schaefer

The Great PIvot cover

There are many books, videos, and news stories out on global warming and climate change. Some are filled with scary predictions and are good at shocking us into action. But the best kind are the ones that try to paint a picture of ways we can take action to make a difference. The Great Pivot is one of the latter category.

The current carbon-based business model is becoming unsustainable. So, dealing with the huge tasks before us means not only deciding what to do but who’s going to do it. The Green New Deal, which is the subject of the last chapter (and is throughout the book in spirit) says that people want and need meaningful work. So why not get two for one?

That’s what the 30 pivots in The Great Pivot are meant to do. Burt’s carefully developed ideas show how we can scale up efforts to build a sustainable future. This means both creating meaningful jobs for workers and generating more sustainability project opportunities for investors.

Burt begins by addressing the employment situation today. The low official percentages don’t reflect the 37 million people ages 25-64 who are out of the labor force. With outsourcing, automation, and the gig economy, it’s tough out there. Today, the middle class is disrupted by changes in the work place and rising costs, and wages have been stagnant. We can rebuild the economic safety net with new sustainability jobs.

The author proposes five categories for job creation and devotes an entire chapter to each. They all have the goal of stabilizing the climate:

  • Advanced energy communities
  • Low-carbon mobility systems
  • A circular economy
  • Reduced food waste
  • A healthy natural world

Starting with Zero Net Energy, the first few pivots involve electrifying single-family homes and then spreading to multi-unit dwellings and commercial spaces. Existing technology can make all spaces more pleasant and energy efficient.

Twenty-eight percent of our greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, and Burt spends significant time discussing low carbon mobility. Besides moving to electric cars, we also need to develop clean mass transit, safe bicycling options, walkable communities, mobility-as-a service options, and build out the EV charging infrastructure. All of these are pivots that require people to do them.

The circular economy is a worthy goal to get us to our goal of climate stability. Instead of the current take-make-waste economy, a circular economy reuses and recycles. There are many jobs in waste prevention and building deconstruction (instead of demolition). How about a tool lending library combined with a repair café and maker space to reuse things rather than replace them?

It’s pathetic that 40 percent of food grown and raised in the U.S. is thrown out, for various reasons. Wasted food has a large impact on the climate. Jobs to prevent, recover, or recycle food waste make for excellent pivots. Many of these jobs do not require higher education—just training—so they would be available to many people who need meaningful work and steady pay.

Restoring nature is a valuable and meaningful form of employment that would help the planet recover. Ways of sequestering more carbon in the soil can improve agricultural yields while reducing carbon in the atmosphere. There is good work in restoring forests, waterways, and wildlife. How about creating furniture or other useful items from drought-stressed trees? Then we could leave healthy trees in place to do their job of pulling carbon out of the atmosphere.

Besides these actions, we can start looking at the economy differently. We need to disrupt business as usual. For example, we should decouple growth from the traditional measurement of using gross domestic product (GDP). Burt proposes four goals:

  • Shift from fossil fuels to renewables
  • Create a circular flow of materials
  • Dematerialize by shifting to digital products and services
  • Radically reduce waste

It’s fine to get people working, but investors can make a big impact too, by funding the projects we need as part of the overall process of transforming our economy. Burt discusses bootstrapping, crowdfunding, direct public offerings, private equity, and other ways to get investors involved in the right way.

The book ends by discussing meaningful work and relating it to the goals of the Green New Deal, including leaving no person behind. We have many ways to move forward, and the 30 pivots are a great place to start. We need to do it now.

 

The Great Pivot by Justine Burt

MP Publishing, 2019

2018 in Review – Going Greener!

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By Steve Schaefer

20K

My Bolt EV hit 20,000 miles of trouble-free driving.

For me, 2018 was a busy year for auto writing, and also for climate action.

In a normal year, I’d have 52 week-long test drives, a bunch of short tests at the annual Western Automotive Journalists event, and maybe catch a few more at some manufacturer’s event, too.

This year, I tested only 28 cars for a week each instead of 52. I did have some quick sample drives at the WAJ event–mostly EVs. The biggest change has been my moving away from gasoline-only cars over the last couple of years, and stopping my testing of them entirely in September.

When I wasn’t testing a car, I was driving my own all-electric Chevrolet Bolt EV. My Bolt EV just turned over 20,000 miles, and with 10K/year on my lease, that’s perfect. Its two-year anniversary is January 8th. Maybe I’ll take it to the dealership for a check-up, since it’s never been back!

Why the the complete end of ICE cars? That’s because on August 28-30, I attended Al Gore’s three-day Climate Reality Leadership Training in Los Angeles, where I became a Climate Reality Leader. As an electric car advocate and now, a climate activist, I have to put my efforts towards guiding people to what’s most important for the long-term health of the planet. And, I want to explore and provide guidance about all the great new EVs that are coming in the next few years. We know that petroleum-fueled cars will not disappear overnight, but there are lots of other fine journalists who can take care of reviewing them.

Most of my auto writing, since it’s green cars only, is happily housed these days on www.cleanfleetreport.com, but I also run stories regularly in my original venue, the San Leandro Times (my first story appeared on February 8, 1992), as well as monthly in the Tri-City Voice out of Fremont, California.

Steve Goes Green may have been home to fewer car reviews in 2018, but it has featured some new material on “going green” in other ways. Some stories came from attending talks at Acterra, a Palo Alto based organization that’s educating people and acting to fight climate change. See recent stories, such as Teaching Kids about Climate Change with Green Ninja and Ertharin Cousin – We Need a Food System for Human and Planetary Health.

Of the 28 cars I tested this year, only seven had no electric motor, and they were all in the first 2/3 of the year. Naturally, with the limitation I’ve set, I can’t and won’t review everything, but that’s OK. Many of the best, most efficient gas-burners are featured on Clean Fleet Report, so it’s worth checking them out there.

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The most unusual EV this year was a 1967 MGB GT that a work colleague spent a year convering into a pure EV. The most exciting EV was the Jaguar i-Pace, which was an all-new crossover from a brand that’s looking toward the future. I expect lots of new models and electrified versions of current cars to appear in the next couple of years.

In September, I planned and hosted the second National Drive Electric Week (NDEW) event at my company. I also attended the Acterra NDEW event and it was very busy! I let people drive my Bolt EV there, and I hope that experience led some of them to go out and get their own EVs.

The NDEW event is an important way for people to learn about EVs directly from owners, not salespeople, and it’s fun for us EV owners to collaborate and share stories. In 2019, the first ever DEED (Drive Electric Earth Day) will take place, presented by the same folks who do the NDEW, and I plan to participate at work and elsewhere.

In October, I attended one day of the three-day VERGE conference in Oakland, which is put on annually by GreenBiz as a coming together of green businesses. There are lots of them, and my busy day generated three stories (two published, one on deck). Here’s a general article on the day itself, and another on what GM is doing to purchase clean power for its plants. I look forward to attending events in 2019 and writing more of those kinds of articles.

Clean Fleet Report gave me lots of quick news assignments over the year–26 were published–which brought my annual story total to around what I’m used to. These are quick takes based on press releases and other information. See my story on a new VW-based electric Meyers Manx. I also contributed stories on different subjects from personal journalist experiences, such as my visit to the Manheim Auto Auction.

In November and December, I spoke with four solar companies, and a few weeks ago, signed up for solar panels on my roof! They’ll go on in April, and when they do, I’ll start charging my car at home. I’ll report more about my solar adventure right here.

2019 will have more EVs and more ways to go green! I plan to learn more about the way our food system affects the climate–from reading, studying, and interviewing folks, and also by slowly changing how I eat.

Happy New Year, and thanks for reading!

Ertharin Cousin – We Need a Food System for Human and Planetary Health

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By Steve Schaefer

Ertharin Cousin-image

“The global food system is broken.”

That’s what Ertharin Cousin told the audience at The Foster Art and Wilderness Foundation in Palo Alto on a Thursday evening in late September. The event, sponsored by Acterra, featured this renowned expert, currently the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

Ideally, we should consider the health of the planet and all the people on it, Cousin told us. But we don’t. We are facing two interrelated challenges: How will we feed 9.5 billion people in 2050, and how can we cope with climate change as it throws normal growing cycles and locations into disarray?

Cousin explained that we need to consider the whole picture, including the social, economic, and environmental outputs of food. We have to deal not only with production and human consumption of food but also its disposal. Food is unevenly distributed in the world, and a large proportion of it is wasted.

The World Food Programme, which Cousin ran, distributes food to developing countries, but it is a tremendously complicated, and at times, dangerous occupation.

How is the system broken? According to a recent report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 821 million people are undernourished, without a secure source of food, and 150 million children are chronically malnourished—including 35 percent of the kids under the age of 5 in Sub Saharan Africa. Cousin explained that children that are undernourished during pregnancy or the first two years of life will suffer from stunted growth and development. The report above was jointly published by five organizations, including two from the UN, the World Food Programme, and the World Health Organization.

In North America, there is increasing obesity, which causes its own diseases and problems. Now, in other parts of the world, some populations must deal with both starvation and obesity at the same time.

Food production and climate change affect each other. Agriculture and raising livestock produce global warming emissions, such as methane, and nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer have negative climate effects as well, as well as contaminating sources of safe drinking water. As the global population increases, more land is cleared for cultivation, negatively affecting the climate by removing trees that can sequester CO2. All this means that areas that are marginal can become unusable for growing crops.

Climate change complicates the food crisis by creating more erratic and extreme weather, leading to more droughts and floods. A climate-change-related loss of biodiversity means that plants and animals have a harder time adapting to changing conditions.

Cousin explained that food waste is the third largest greenhouse gas emitter—about 3.3 billion tons of CO2 and methane a year. In the southern hemisphere, a $310 billion loss can be attributed to problems of spoilage and distribution, while in the Northern Hemisphere, $680 billion worth is partly the result of food that is wasted or is rejected because it’s not “perfect.”

Cousin says we need an interdisciplinary approach. “We need to work as individuals, companies, and nations, because issues of global food security and planetary health are too complex for us to simply make incremental changes.”

Cousin proposes that we actively pursue research and innovation, into soil and seeds, for example. We also need to research and develop more efficient water use and better post-harvest practices.

Some developments are helping. For example, there are new ways to reduce cattle and dairy emissions. One experiment placed seaweed in cattle feed and was found to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent.

Beyond the farming aspect, we need changes in consumer behavior, because customer demand affects what farmers grow—they want to make a profit. New research and innovation in alternate foods can develop new proteins that produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Although there are some areas of the world that struggle the most, we need food safety for everyone, no matter where they live, Cousin advises. “We need to take care of the smallholder farmers,” said Cousin. “Eighty percent of the food in Asia and Africa is grown by these farmers.”

“We need collective action by farmers, academics, citizens, and government,” said Cousin. Governments can make policies that affect behavior. For example, you can get a tax deduction for giving food away to food banks, but if you give it to a group that sells food at a lower price you can’t. That has to change.

Cousin pointed out that there are lots of subsidies for sugar and soybeans—much more than for fruit and vegetables. As part of looking at the whole picture, we need to weigh the tradeoffs, since jobs and livelihoods can be negatively affected when we make changes that seem like the right thing for food and the planet, such as reducing beef or dairy production. People in those industries will lose their jobs.

Cousin says, “We need to decide issues on facts, not emotions.” For example, there are negative implications to transporting food, including generating more climate-changing CO2 from the trucks that bring it—but it can help prevent people from starving. What takes priority?

Cousin brought up an idea that might not seem directly related to food—gender equality. That means equal access to training, capital and inputs for women, which can affect the way food is handled in communities around the world.

“We need international trade policy to create mechanisms to respond to climate change and food security issues,” says Cousin. “We need the right research and data to support contextual policies to meet the real needs of the global community.”

The Bottom Line

Food security and climate change are complicated issues, and they are interrelated. We must be willing to take collective action to support the health of people and the planet. It’s an enormous undertaking, but every hungry child needs our attention – no matter where they live.

 

Ertharin Cousin is the former executive director of the World Food Programme and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome, nominated by President Obama. She is on Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Women list and was named one of TIME’s 100 Must Influential People.

Acterra’s Mission is to bring people together to create local solutions for a healthy planet.