Friday, Aug 29, 2008
THE PROPHET
Jim Ball
In the summer of 2003, the Rev. Jim Ball took a road trip through the Bible Belt. Driving a dark-blue Prius from Texas to the nation's capital, he stopped at evangelical churches to talk about the moral and ethical implications of burning fossil fuel, sparking debate over global warming with a simple question: "What would Jesus drive?"
As executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, Ball continues to inject the language of scripture into the debate over climate change, calling on Christians to trade in their SUVs for more fuel-efficient cars. "Is it loving your neighbor to put them at risk of all these threats of climate change?" he asks. "Is it doing unto others as you would have them do unto you? I don't think so." Under his leadership, 30 prominent evangelical leaders -- representing 45 million congregants -- held a three-day retreat last year to discuss global warming and are preparing to issue a landmark statement on the issue.
"Jim is like one of the Old Testament prophets warning the people," says the Rev. Richard Cizik, of the National Association of Evangelicals. "I'm sure he has wondered if he was ever going to see the day when the evangelical world was going to wake up. But he's a patient servant of the Lord, and I think that day has come."
By speaking directly to evangelicals -- the base of President Bush's support -- Ball is working to dismantle the divide that has long separated churchgoers and tree huggers. Last January, he attended a pro-life rally carrying a provocative placard that read "Stop Mercury Poisoning of the Unborn."
Ball, 44, grew up in Texas and engages in what he calls "spiritual jogging," praying on his eight-mile runs. He became interested in climate change while getting a doctorate in theological ethics. "Climate change isn't just an environmental problem -- that's low-balling it," he says. "Millions of poor people could die in this century because of global warming, and millions of others are at risk of hunger and malnutrition. The poster child of global warming is a poor child. And Christians are supposed to look out for the poor, because God loves them."
THE GOVERNATOR
Arnold Schwarzenegger
In his first two years as governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has implemented more ambitious initiatives to reduce global warming than any other politician in America. "We have to make very, very aggressive moves to reverse this threat," he says. In June, the governor signed an executive order requiring California -- the world's sixth-largest economy -- to slash its climate-warming emissions by 80 percent by 2050. "The goal he set eclipses Britain's," says Sir David King, chief science advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair. "Now we're second to California -- and that is one race I'm delighted to be second in."
Schwarzenegger also backed a law requiring that all cars sold in California lower their emissions by nearly a third within a decade -- a move that sparked similar measures in 10 other states, as well as a lawsuit by automakers. He is installing hundreds of hydrogen fueling stations along the state's major highways and is pushing California utilities to produce 20 percent of their electricity from renewable energy by 2010. "He belongs in the sparsely populated top tier of elected officials who are not only taking global warming seriously but devising solutions on a scale that actually matches the problem," says David Hawkins, climate director for the National Resources Defense Council.
Schwarzenegger -- who has been influenced behind the scenes by his wife's cousin, Robert Kennedy Jr. -- appears to have embraced his inner tree hugger on a personal level as well. He has instituted a five-minute limit on showers at his home, downsized the fleet of Hummers that he has been collecting since his "Terminator" days and worked with GM to develop an SUV that runs on hydrogen.
His environmental policies are extremely popular with voters, proving that taking a stand on global warming doesn't hurt a politician at the polls. But Schwarzenegger, 58, characterizes his commitment to climate change as an issue of morality. "In decades past, when we brought this damage to the world around us, we did not know any better -- that was our mistake," he says. "But now we do know better. And if we don't do anything about it, that will be our injustice."
THE VISIONARY
Amory Lovins
Nobody has a more varied and eccentric set of credentials as a climate crusader than Amory Lovins. A respected physicist and economist who co-founded the Rocky Mountain Institute in 1982, Lovins has published 29 books on energy and the environment, helped the semiconductor industry devise hyper-efficient factories, and advised 18 heads of state, including Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. His top priority, however, is transforming the automobile. Thanks to America's love affair with the Hummer, average fuel efficiency is actually worse today than it was in 1980.
"Transportation accounts for 70 percent of America's oil demands and generates a third of all carbon emissions," says Lovins, 57. "It is the most intractable part of the climate problem."
To prod Detroit to think cleaner, Lovins has designed a new kind of SUV: the Revolution. His concept car goes from zero to 60 in 8.3 seconds and gets 114 miles per gallon. Crafted from superstrength plastics, the Revolution weighs only 1,850 pounds -- less than half as much as a conventional car -- yet has more than five times the crash resistance. That makes it light enough to be driven by hydrogen fuel cells, which lack the oomph to power heavier cars with gas engines.
Lovins, the son of an inventor, attended Harvard and became an Oxford don at 21. He has briefed automakers on the Revolution and is working with some to incorporate more lightweight plastics into their designs. His goal is to push American industry to double its fuel efficiency and find substitutes for oil -- a move that he projects would save $70 billion a year. "Using energy more efficiently doesn't just address the climate crisis -- it offers an economic bonanza," Lovins says. "Why? Because saving fossil fuel is a lot cheaper than buying it."
THE GO-BETWEEN
Jonathan Lash
What do leading Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, General Electric, DuPont and Starbucks have in common? They've all listened to Jonathan Lash. As president of the World Resources Institute, Lash has arguably done more than any other environmentalist to bridge the bitter divide between industry interests and green groups determined to halt global warming. A former top advisor to President Clinton, Lash has waltzed into the boardrooms of the world's biggest polluters, sweet-talked CEOs with his kindly air, and pushed them to not only slash their emissions but also improve their bottom lines. "He is a committed green and a pillar of integrity, but he does what most eco-purists are too prudish to do: get in bed with industry," says Kevin Curtis of the National Environmental Trust. "And he never regrets it in the morning."
A former Peace Corps volunteer and the son of Greenwich Village radicals, Lash considers himself a "pragmatic idealist." He even supports nuclear power as a necessary evil in the fight against climate change -- a position that has drawn the ire of some environmentalists. "Global warming is the most pressing environmental problem humankind has ever faced," he says. "We can't push any potential solution off the table." The challenge of storing radioactive waste, Lash insists, pales in comparison to the floods, violent storms and droughts that are increasing as a result of global warming.
An avid skier and sailor, Lash used to own 13 motorcycles -- but stopped riding after his youngest daughter threatened to get one for herself. A Harvard graduate, he started off as a federal litigator, switching to environmental law after he grew weary of putting people in jail. His hard-bitten pragmatism about climate change is paying off. He helped DuPont cut its climate-warming pollution by 65 percent -- five years ahead of schedule. He worked with Starbucks to obtain 5 percent of the electricity for its North American retail stores from renewable sources, and with IBM to dramatically boost the energy efficiency of its factories and products.
Lash, 60, believes that a growing number of corporate leaders are ready to back a strong federal cap on climate-warming pollution. "It's enough to make even a gloomy environmentalist hopeful," he says. The irony, he notes, is that a president who boasts of his business degree is bucking the industry trend. "Everyone predicted that George Bush was going to be the 'CEO president,'" Lash says. "But if he truly had business savvy, he'd be following the path of these trailblazers."
THE HYDROGEN PROFESSOR
Dr. Bragi Árnason
Can a single nation completely eliminate its consumption of oil and coal, meeting all of its fuel needs entirely through hydrogen? That's what Iceland plans to do in the next 40 years, thanks to the pioneering efforts of Bragi Árnason. Known as "Professor Hydrogen," the University of Iceland scientist has turned his nation into a testing ground for the world's most advanced experiment in renewable energy. Prompted by Árnason's crusade, the university has teamed up with Shell and DaimlerChrysler to wean the country from its annual dependence on 6 million barrels of imported oil, converting every bus, car and boat on the island to hydrogen. "If they can demonstrate that an economy run on renewable energy is viable," says Kert Davies of Greenpeace, "it will be an enormous precedent for the world to follow."
Árnason, who has been pushing his vision of a hydrogen future for nearly 30 years, was long regarded as something of an eccentric. "He was the preacher in the desert -- very few people listened to him," says Thorsteinn Sigfusson, a fellow professor. "Now he is the founding father of hydrogen, well-known all over Iceland."
Following Árnason's blueprint, the city of Reykjavík is transforming its bus fleet into hydrogen vehicles. Árnason concedes that switching the entire country to fuel cells won't be easy: It takes energy to produce hydrogen -- energy that usually comes from the very fossil fuels it's meant to replace. But Iceland already produces nearly all of its electricity from geothermal and hydroelectric power, giving it a clean, homegrown way to separate hydrogen molecules from water. By the time the country is finished implementing Árnason's vision, it will have cut its climate-warming pollution in half.
Árnason, 70, doesn't expect to be around to witness that day -- but his four daughters and eight grandchildren will be. The professor, who rides horses across Iceland for weeks at a time, says his country's future will look much like its past. "When the Vikings settled in Iceland, they used only renewable energy like wind, sun and wood," he notes. "The Icelanders were in the 'first solar-energy civilization' -- and so was the whole world. Now we are finding our way out of the fossil-fuel era, back into the 'second solar-energy civilization.' And, in the end, the same will also be the case for the rest of the world."
THE PIED PIPER
Greg Nickels
Earlier this year, as the rest of the industrialized world prepared to implement the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming, Greg Nickels was frustrated to see the United States sitting on the sidelines. So the Seattle mayor decided that if "the White House isn't going to make it happen from the top down, America's cities can and will make it happen from the ground up."
In February, Nickels introduced the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, calling on municipalities to meet Kyoto's targets -- reducing greenhouse gases to below 1990 levels. So far, 187 mayors from major cities in 38 states have signed the agreement, and Nickels hopes to double the number next year. "He's making global warming the focus of the next great grass-roots revolution," says New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. "Let's face it -- if we wait around for the feds to act on global warming, nothing is going to happen."
Nickels, 50, got involved in politics when he dropped out of the University of Washington to volunteer for the Young Democrats. Under his initiative, cities from Miami and Atlanta to Denver and Los Angeles are implementing a host of climate-control strategies: adding bike paths and bus routes, planting trees to absorb CO2, buying hybrid cruisers for police, pushing local utilities to use more renewable energy, and using energy-efficient light bulbs in street lamps and stoplights. By cutting their emissions, cities have already saved a total of $700 million -- smacking down Bush's claim that Kyoto would destroy the economy.
When it comes to global warming, cities are both the problem and the solution. They account for 78 percent of all climate-warming emissions -- but they may possess enough purchasing power to actually alter the weather. "We buy car fleets, buses, construction equipment, computer systems, light bulbs," says Nickels, whose city's economy is larger than Ireland's. "If we invest in efficient technologies, that can have huge implications for climate change."
THE PROFITEER
Jeff Immelt
As the CEO of General Electric, Jeff Immelt is interested in global warming for only one reason: the bottom line. "Rest assured, I am not tackling climate concerns because it's moral or trendy or good for P.R.," he says. "The biggest driver for me is business potential: It will accelerate economic growth." In May, Immelt announced that G.E. is doubling its annual R&D spending on clean technology to $1.5 billion -- developing a dizzying array of wind turbines, hybrid-engine trains, state-of-the-art jet engines, zero-emission coal plants and superefficient home appliances. In return, the 49-year-old chairman expects to double revenues from those same inventions, taking in $20 billion a year by 2010. "Immelt is the tipping point," says Joel Makower of Clean Edge, a leading green-business consulting firm. "Where he goes on climate, industry will follow."
Immelt, whose company is one of the world's biggest polluters, is part of a growing push by industry to cash in on the business opportunities presented by global warming. In October, Wal-Mart unveiled a plan to invest $500 million annually to make its stores and trucks more energy efficient. Whether such corporate giants follow through on their commitments remains to be seen -- but as companies and consumers search for replacements for fossil fuels, Immelt is banking on GE's ability to supply them with cleaner machines. "We now live in a carbon-constrained world where the amount of CO2 must be reduced," he says. "GE has built a history on solving the world's toughest problems, and this one is no exception."
Immelt majored in math at Dartmouth, where he was an active frat member and "Animal House" fan, before getting an MBA at Harvard and going to work for G.E. at age 27. As CEO, he has ordered the company to boost its own energy efficiency by 30 percent over the next seven years and to reduce its projected pollution by 40 percent. To the shock of environmental advocates and industry colleagues, he has also called for a federal policy to reduce global warming.
"Industry cannot solve the problems of the world alone," he says. "We need to work in concert with government."
THE BIG-THREE FOE
Dan Becker
"Convincing the automotive industry to change their business practices," says Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming program, "is like pushing a Suburban up a mountain with your nose." Still, Becker has shouldered that Sisyphean task for the last 16 years, lobbying on Capitol Hill and in Detroit's corporate suites for stricter fuel-economy standards and improved environmental design.
"Every gallon of gas we burn produces 28 pounds of global warming," Becker explains. "And the biggest single step we can take to curb global warming is to make cars go further on their fuel."
Becker has taken that challenge not only to the federal government but also straight into America's garages. When Toyota and Honda introduced their first hybrid models in 2000, the Sierra Club gave both companies its first-ever award for environmental excellence. Then, with the aid of a former Big Three automotive adman, Becker helped launch the Sierra Club's "I Will Evolve" campaign. It aimed at educating and exciting young people about hybrid vehicles and alternative fuel sources, with the conviction that they can set car trends, just as they do for fashion and music.
This summer, after decades of publicly castigating Ford for its atrocious fuel-economy record (Becker calls the Ford Excursion the "Ford Valdez"), the environmentalist offered the automaker a carrot rather than a stick. In return for Ford's pledge to cut its fleet's global warming emissions by 40 percent by the year 2030, Becker said the Sierra Club would publicly support the new Mercury Mariner hybrid SUV.
Although encouraged by the incremental change he has seen, Becker is aware that the relationship between the Sierra Club and the car industry remains a tenuous peace. In 2004, Becker helped steer a law through the California Legislature that establishes the world's strictest emissions standards -- aiming to cut auto exhaust levels by 25 percent by 2016. Canada recently adopted the new standards, and 10 Northeastern and Pacific states are poised to do the same.
The chain reaction has sent shock waves into the auto industry, and last winter the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers filed suit against the state of California, challenging not only the new standards but also the Legislature's right to set the rules in the first place. "They're gearing up for a big fight," Becker says. "It won't be easy, but I believe we can win. This is the tipping point, and once we get past it, all of America will be able to breathe easier."
THE DEVELOPER
Robert Congel
Robert Congel wants you to know that Destiny USA is not just another mall. The 800-acre resort, slated to open in his hometown of Syracuse, N.Y., in 2009, will be the largest man-made structure on earth. Designs for the $20 billion complex include 1,000 shops and restaurants, 80,000 hotel rooms in 12 high-rise towers, a 40,000-seat arena, performance theaters, and a 200-acre climate-controlled recreational biosphere.
But here's the capper: The entire development will be built and operated without burning a single gallon of fossil fuel. Bulldozers. cranes and construction trucks will run on biodiesel. The completed mini-city will be powered by wind turbines, solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells. Food in Destiny USA restaurants will be organically or locally grown. The jolly green mall, Congel explains, is "a gigantic research lab disguised as a resort." As the biggest renewable-energy development in the world, Destiny USA will be a new paradigm for a clean future.
The 70-year-old Congel is famous for malling the Northeast. Twenty-five of his complexes dot the area. The ambitious developer first envisioned Destiny USA as a Mall of America for upstate New York, a tourist attraction to boost the area's economy. Then he visited the D-day beaches of Normandy with his family in 2001. Walking among the graves of tens of thousands of American soldiers, he says, left him with a nagging question: What have you done for this wonderful country that gave you all these blessings? Shortly after returning from Normandy, the self-described "profit-motivated guy" saw the dark side of our oil-drunk world.
"Nobody wants to see these kids coming back from Iraq with their legs shot off or in body bags, just for oil," he says. Congel, who began his career as a "ditch-digging contractor," is confident that projects like Destiny USA can help America wean itself from oil and preserve our standard of living. After all, he is talking about building a new paradise of consumerism. "I think we can live responsibly and have a better lifestyle than we have now," Congel says.
THE FUTURIST
Martin Hoffert
To borrow an old phrase, Martin Hoffert sees the world of tomorrow today. "We're using fossil fuels a million times faster than nature is making fossil fuels," he says. "That's a shock to the system." What also may be a shock are the alternative energy sources that Hoffert, a physics professor at New York University, has tapped to combat global warming.
Take, for instance, his notion of wiring the entire planet with thousands of miles of superconductor cables to transmit electricity efficiently. Conceivably, we could create one huge energy grid, where Beijing could buy electricity from Boise. Then there's his plan for suspending turbines in the jet stream to harness wind power. And don't overlook his idea for sparking nuclear fusion by extracting helium-3 from the atmospheres of Jupiter and Neptune, rendering the entire solar system a "Persian Gulf" for planet Earth.
At the moment, Hoffert is focused on space-based solar power: giant orbiting satellites containing huge photovoltaic cells that would capture sunlight and beam it to Earth to generate energy. There is about eight times more sunlight in space than on Earth, he points out, and a solar power satellite -- as opposed to planetside solar panels -- would not be hindered by night or cloudy weather. Earlier this year, Hoffert joined his son Eric (a former Bell Labs scientist) to launch a company called Versatility Energy to explore the applications of space solar technology.
Hoffert first saw unmistakable signs of global warming while studying climate change at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. His research led him to the conclusion that the increase in levels of carbon in the environment, generated by humans and their machines, was a significant source of the warming.
"In the long run," he says, "if we burn the whole fossil-fuel reserve, we have the potential for an incredibly adverse transformation of the world's ecosystem."
"Climate Warriors and Heroes" written by Ira Boudway, J.J. Helland, Sarah Karnasiewicz, Aaron Kinney, Amanda Griscom Little, Katharine Mieszkowski and Page Rockwell.
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