Climate One

Canada’s Oil Sands: Energy Security, or Energy Disaster? Cassie Doyle, Consul General, Canada; Former Canadian Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Jason Mark, Earth Island Institute Carl Pope, Chairman, The Sierra Club Alex Pourbaix, President of Energy and Oil Pipelines, TransCanada The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry heavy crude oil from Alberta to America’s Gulf Coast refineries. In this Climate One debate, a panel of experts argues for and against the controversial pipeline. For Alex Pourbaix, President of Energy and Oil Pipelines, TransCanada, the pipeline builder, and Cassie Doyle, Canada’s Consul General in San Francisco, the merits of the project are clear: America would bank a stable, secure supply of crude from a friendly neighbor. Why would the United States opt to buy crude from anyone other than Canada if given a choice?, asks Pourbaix. “To suggest that those other countries are more responsible environmental citizens than Canada begs comprehension. It is far more compelling to be getting your oil needs from Canada, rather than getting it from other countries such as Libya, Nigeria, or Venezuela,” he says. Cassie Doyle downplays the environmental impact of processing the Alberta oil sands’ heavy crude. “We assume that the oil sands production is static when it comes to environmental performance. When, since 1990, we’ve seen a 30% improvement in the carbon intensity per barrel.” Sierra Club Chairman Carl Pope and Jason Mark, Editor of the Earth Island Journal, dismiss both claims – that Keystone XL crude will stay in the United States and can be extracted without exacerbating climate change – as implausible. “This is really an export pipeline. It’s not really an import pipeline,” says Pope. “The United States is going to be used as a transit zone and a refining zone. We’re going to take the environmental risks.” Jason Mark faults the State Department environmental review for not acknowledging the pipeline’s contribution to climate change. “The U.S. State Department said that this pipeline would have ‘no significant environmental impact.’ As a journalist, that felt to me like the classic example of the headline writer not actually reading the story.” Mark highlights what is, to him, the even larger issue. “Is the United States going to be complicit in burning megatons more carbon dioxide that’s going to fuel run-away climate change?” We have a choice, he says, “Do we continue to make investments that leave us on the path of a carbon-intensive economy? Or, when do we make the hard decision that says we’re going to stop using oil?” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on August 30th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Power Down The Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham, President, The Regeneration Project Chris King, Chief Regulatory Officer, eMeter Gregory Walton, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Stanford University Energy underpins our civilization. It’s hardly surprising that convincing people to use less of something so tied to their comfort and survival is challenging. Smart policy has given California a head start, but it’s not enough. We need to dig deeper to reap energy savings, say these three experts convened by Climate One. “I think there’s a downside in focusing too narrowly on money,” says Gregory Walton, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Stanford University. Instead, Walton and his team focus on creating the sense that saving energy is a community movement. We need to reach a point where saving energy becomes the social norm, he says, as is the case with wearing seat belts and recycling. “There’s a psychological transformation that happens,” Walton says. “It’s the same behavior, the same experience, but it comes to feel very different by virtue of its social need.” There are still other levers to pull. “I have a bit of an advantage, in that most religions can use guilt,” jokes Rev. Sally G. Bingham, President and Founder, California Interfaith Power & Light. “Sometimes it works. But mostly our congregations that are cutting their energy use are doing it for the right reasons,” she says. “Fairly often a congregation will begin this process for money saving reasons, but also because they feel they are doing the right thing” Chris King, Chief Regulatory Officer, eMeter, says customers need better information. “There’s this strong desire for more information and ability to do something,” he says. “What they really want to know: How much energy does each of my appliances use?” It’s helpful to know that electricity consumption spiked when I plugged in my toaster, he says, but without comparing it to the total, the bigger picture is lost. A better solution is to give customers a monthly breakdown for electricity use by all appliances, which he says can be done with up to 90% accuracy using a combination of the smart meter and algorithms. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on July 22nd, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Senior Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council The fact that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is so readily embraced by progressives can conceal that his message is an inherently conservative one. Listen to Kennedy talk for an hour and you’ll hear the words “free market” invoked more often than in any Milton Friedman tome. “Show me a polluter, and I’ll show you a subsidy,” Kennedy is fond of saying, as he does here. The market is flawed, he says, by polluters who “make themselves rich by making everyone else poor” – externalizing their costs and internalizing the profits. Kennedy, Senior Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council, was in San Francisco to promote The Last Mountain, a new film that features his efforts to end mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia. If dirty fuels were forced to cover their full costs, Kennedy says, not only could they not compete in the market, renewable energy would win. “Right now, we have a marketplace that is governed by rules that were written by the incumbents – coal, oil, and nukes – to reward the dirtiest, filthiest, most poisonous, most destructive, most vindictive fuels from hell, rather than the cheap, clean, green, wholesome, safe, and patriotic fuels from heaven,” he says, to the loudest applause of the night. How did we get here? “Our democracy is broken,” Kennedy argues, with a campaign finance system “which is a system of legalized bribery.” And the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision will only hasten the decline. “The Citizens United case is the end of civilization, the end of democracy, with a 100-year-old law that said corporations cannot contribute to federal political candidates or officeholders. The Supreme Court just wiped that out, and we have a tsunami of corporate wealth that is now flooding into the political process.” Even so, Kennedy remains optimistic. “We built, in this country, more wind and solar last year than all the incumbents combined. That is a critical milestone in the adaptation of disruptive technologies,” he says. “Nobody notices it because the other one is so dominant in the market.” This is going to happen with clean energy, he says, not because government tells it to, but because the market is going to drive it there. “We can produce electric cars that cost six cents a mile to drive over the life of the car versus an internal combustion car that costs 60 cents. How long can they maintain that?” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on June 16, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Crops, Cattle and Carbon Cynthia Cory, Director of Environmental Affairs, California Farm Bureau Federation Paul Martin, Director of Environmental Services, Western United Dairymen Jeanne Merrill, California Climate Action Network Karen Ross, Secretary, California Department of Food and Agriculture Making California’s farms more energy efficient, and ensuring that farmers can adapt to a warmer planet, will be a decades-long challenge, agrees this panel of experts gathered by Climate One. That a serious conversation on the linkages between agriculture and climate change even exists in California is largely thanks to passage of the state’s landmark climate change law, AB32. Cynthia Cory, Director of Environmental Affairs, California Farm Bureau Federation, says the way to sell this new reality to her members, most of them family farmers, is to focus on the bottom line. “What they think makes sense, is energy efficiency,” she says. Jeanne Merrill, Policy Director, California Climate and Agriculture Network, elaborates on what AB32 could mean for farmers. The proposed carbon trading system, currently under development by the California Air Resources Board, would enable a farm, she says, “to reduce its own emissions, voluntarily, by being part of the carbon market.” Still other opportunities await farmers. A cap-and-trade system would generate revenue, a portion of which, her organization argues, “should go for the key things that we need to assist California agriculture to remain viable when temperatures rise and water become more constrained.” Paul Martin, Director of Environmental Services, Western United Dairymen, says farmers should be guided by a three-legged stool of sustainability: ethical production, scientific and environmental responsibility, and economic performance. His distilled message: “We need organic food because people want it. We need grass-fed because people want it. We need natural because people want it. And we need conventional because people want that kind of food.” California’s new Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary, Karen Ross, is encouraged that food had finally entered the policy debate, and expresses optimism that young people will carry it forward. “There’s a renewed interest in where our food comes from, how it’s produced, and who is producing it.” She highlights the role of cities in shaping a more sustainable food policy. “It’s the real intersection of agriculture, food, health, and nutrition,” she gushes. “Cities are saying, ‘We can do something about this.’ It’s about identifying open plots for community gardens. It’s about making sure access to nutritious, locally grown food is available. It’s about understanding what it takes to help those farmers on the urban edge, or right in our local communities.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on June 14, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Salmon Odyssey Phil Isenberg, Chair, Delta Vision Task Force James Norton, Filmmaker, Salmon: Running the Gauntlet Jonathan Rosenfield, Ph.D., Conservation Biologist, The Bay Institute In the post-World War II boom, previous generations prioritized cheap electricity and economic development over salmon. On the West Coast, huge dams blocked rivers and sprawl fragmented habitat. If wild salmon are to survive, in California and elsewhere, we must acknowledge that well-intentioned human ingenuity has failed and that tough choices wait, says this panel of experts.“We overestimated our ability to mitigate the impacts of that dam construction,” says James Norton, writer and producer of Salmon: Running the Gauntlet. Fish ladders, hatcheries, barging – all have been deployed in an attempt to work around Mother Nature. “It’s turned out to be much more complicated than that, and it’s never really worked,” he says. The complications don’t end there. In trying to sustain a commercial salmon fishery even as dams killed fish and sprawl chewed up habitat, salmon and fisherman both lost. The result: commercial fishing is “remnant industry,” Norton says, with 30,000 jobs lost on the West Coast in past 20 years. To Norton, the lessons of this troubled history are clear. “I’d get out of the business of managing complex ecosystems. We’ve learned, over the last 150 years, there’s no appropriate surrogate for the natural productivity of these systems. We’ve learned that abundance – true abundance – is the default condition of these places. It’s not something that we tease out of them by being really clever.”For Phil Isenberg, Chair, Delta Stewardship Council, it’s all about our establishing priorities. He notes that in California demands for water and ecosystems are on equal footing, which should work to the benefit of salmon. “We have fought since before WWII the question of whether the human use of water is always more important than anything else. At least in California, the answer is No, it’s not.” Jonathan Rosenfield, a conservation biologist with The Bay Institute, cautions against pitting salmon against people or jobs. “It doesn’t need to be framed in terms of either farmers in the Central Valley have water, or we have salmon.” We do, he says, need to heed the message sent by the salmon’s decline. “Salmon are a hardy, adaptable, incredibly creative species that have survived for millions of years, through several ice ages, in every watershed up and down this coast. The fact that we can’t maintain them in the system says that we have way, way overreached any semblance of balance between human use and what our ecosystems need.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on June 3rd, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sustainable Urbanism Stuart Cohen, Executive Director, TransForm Mike Ghielmetti, President, Signature Development Group Ezra Rapport, Executive Director, Association of Bay Area Governments Infill development is hard. Even in California, one of the few states to have given local officials guidance on how to plan for growth, building smart, sustainable projects close to transit is a challenge, says this panel of experts.“People say, ‘We can’t do enough infill.’ There are too many obstacles to doing it right,” says Stuart Cohen, Executive Director, TransForm. “But those are obstacles we have control of. I am hopeful for the future, but we need to create a vision for the future that people can believe in. Infill development, if done right – and it’s a big if – can actually enhance our communities.” Mike Ghielmetti, President, Signature Properties, a Bay Area developer, describes a process riddled with uncertainty and risk. Will city council members be in office and planning officials their jobs over the five to 10 years it may take to build a project? Who will pay for schools and parks? Does the project site contain historic buildings? Is the site contaminated? Despite the challenges, “We have to push this vision forward,” Ghielmetti says. “We have to figure out a way to accommodate growth, so that we can provide housing for all levels of society. We can provide for new jobs and economic vitality.” Realizing that California could not meet its greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals under AB32 without tackling emissions from cars, lawmakers, in 2008, passed SB375. The law directly confronts emissions from transportation by forcing cities to plan for growth that reduces miles driven and clusters new development near existing transit and services. Ezra Rapport, Executive Director, Association of Bay Area Governments, says the process outlined in SB375 should help reduce uncertainty and insulate planning decisions from local political considerations. Under the law, 18 metropolitan planning organizations (MPO) will set regional 2020 and 2035 GHG reductions targets for cars. Each MPO will then prepare a Sustainable Communities Strategy that demonstrates how the region will meet its greenhouse gas reduction target. Rapport says those plans will remove some of the project-by-project uncertainty. “The election cycle is obviously paramount in all politicians’ minds,” he says. “But when they’re sitting on the city council, talking about the plan for growth that will take place over the next 10 to 20 years, they’re not really challenged in their election cycles by those decisions.” “In my point of view, if a project is properly planned, and it has community buy-in, and it’s continually refreshed, you will get support,” he says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on May 25th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Calthorpe, Founder, Calthorpe Associates; Author, Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change It’s a love story gone horribly wrong. Big cars, ever-bigger homes, distant suburbs – all of it kept afloat by cheap oil. If this American arrangement ever made sense, it certainly doesn’t now, Peter Calthorpe says. Tragically, we’re perpetuating this failed system in much of the country, ignoring a cheaper, greener alternative: urbanism. “It’s better than free,” says Calthorpe, founder of Calthorpe Associates and author of Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change. “It costs less money to build smart, walkable, transit-oriented communities than it does to build sprawl. It takes up less land, it uses less energy, it uses less infrastructure, less roads … less of everything.” For Calthorpe, the ruptured housing bubble revealed a broken system but offers a chance to rethink how we build. “The real estate recession was a sign not just of perverse bank financing,” he says, “it was also a manifestation that we’d been building too much of the wrong stuff for too long, specifically large-lot, single-family subdivisions.” Why did we overbuild? “Habit and inertia,” Calthorpe says. “There’s tremendous institutional inertia” – banks, homebuilders, and zoning. “We have land-use maps that dictate low density in many areas and single use in most areas.” Calthorpe dismisses the notion that every American yearns for a piece of suburbia. Households with kids represent just 24 percent of the total, he says. The rest – singles, empty nesters, young couples – have different needs. “There are a whole range of needs out there and lifestyles that the one-size-fits-all subdivision just doesn’t satisfy,” he says. Calthorpe gives an example from his firm’s work, Stapleton, the nation’s largest redevelopment project. There, 12,000 units are going up on 4,500 acres – four times the density of the typical suburb – at the site of Denver’s old airport. “People spend more dollars per square foot for a smaller house and a smaller lot,” Calthorpe says, “but it’s in a walkable community; they’re willing to make that trade.”Change will require hard choices. Calthorpe challenges environmentalists to accept that infill alone won’t be able to meet the demand for housing; in some areas, projects cited near transit, for instance, building on greenfields may be necessary. We must also be willing to partner with developers. Development can help pay for a lot of the things we need, Calthorpe says: levees, transit extensions, flood control projects, parks, open space, and schools. “Quite frankly, the Bay Area should be thankful that we have the growth to deal with because it’s what we can use to repair so much of what we’ve misdesigned,” he says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on May 25th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wal-Mart: Force of Nature or Greenwashing? Edward Humes, Author, Force of Nature Greg Dalton, Vice President of Special Projects, The Commonwealth Club; Founder, Climate One - Moderator Wal-Mart is not a sustainable company, says author Edward Humes. But the mega-retailer is making money by investing in sustainability. The story of how Wal-Mart made the pivot toward green is well told by Humes, author of Force of Nature: The Unlikely Story of Wal-Mart’s Green Revolution. The unlikely hero is Jib Ellison, an elite river guide-turned sustainability consultant. Through connections, Ellison wrangled a meeting with then-Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott. Ellison’s message for Scott: Wal-Mart’s practices are riddled with waste and it’s costing you money. The retort: Prove it. A series of early successes won over Scott and, it’s not a stretch to say, changed the direction of the company. Wal-Mart added auxiliary generators to its 7,000-truck fleet. Fuel savings netted the company hundreds of millions of dollars. Next, someone suggested that a toymaker reduce the size of the box holding a toy truck. One year, and 497 avoided shipping containers later, Wal-Mart had saved $2.5 million on fuel and materials. “That was an early proof of concept that doing something that was lowering the footprint and more sustainable – baby steps, obviously – had a big return,” he says. Executives now asked, “‘What if we go across all of our products and start looking for those kinds of opportunities,’” says Humes. “And it began to snowball. It stopped being a hippy proposition that some river guide came up with, and started being more of a no-brainer business proposition.” When Climate One’s Greg Dalton asks the inevitable question about greenwashing, Humes is ready. “It sounds like we’re up here singing Wal-Mart’s praises.” But, he goes on, “this isn’t a chorus of ‘Wal-Mart is fabulous.’ It’s a very specific change in the way they’ve decided to do business, which is to try and be more sustainable because it makes economic sense to do so.” Humes credits Lee Scott and Wal-Mart for giving peers cover to follow their lead. “They made it safe for other companies to have the same conversation about sustainability because they’ve shown maybe it’s not so crazy and risky after all. I think they are a large reason why sustainability is even a word that big businesses talk about.” For Humes, the stakes are too high to quibble over Wal-Mart’s motivations. “I think they’ve been pretty careful about saying, ‘We’re not a green company.’ They never will be a green company. They’re an out-sourced, big-box retailer that wants you to buy ever-more amounts of stuff,” he says. But “if you’re driving 60 miles-an-hour towards oblivion and slow the car down to 20 miles-an-hour, is that a good thing? I think it is.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on May 16th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charge It? Rob Bearman, Director, Global Alliances, Utilities and Energy, Better Place Mike DiNucci, VP of Strategic Accounts, Coulomb Technologies Jay Friedland, Legislative Director, Plug In America Jonathan Read, CEO, ECOtality Consumers are ready for electric vehicles. Entrepreneurs and policymakers just need to hustle to work out the kinks in the nationwide networks that will charge the cars, says this panel of experts assembled at Climate One. Automakers see a chance to free their customers from expensive oil, says Mike DiNucci, VP of Strategic Accounts, Coulomb Technologies: “Car companies see a golden opportunity to re-set that paradigm, and become more sustainably connected to their customers.” One company working to re-set the driving experience is Better Place, which plans to sells consumers miles through a network of charging and battery-swapping stations. “Better Place’s philosophy is we sell miles. The customer, the driver, should never have to think about kilowatt-hours. They should never have to plan, or have a timer at their charge spot,” says Rob Bearman, Director, Global Energy Alliance. Jonathan Read, CEO, ECOtality, says his company is working with utilities to develop real-time charging rates as low as $0.05 or $0.06 per kilowatt-hour during off-peak evening hours. “We’re always going to be competing between two minds: home charging and the price of gas. The consumer is always going to be making value judgments in between there. It’s our job as private-sector entrepreneurs to figure what is the tipping point” – at what point will consumers ditch gas cars for electricity, and how will they decide whether to charge in public or at home. Jay Friedland, Legislative Director, Plug In America, who has driven an electric Toyota RAV4 for a decade, says he’s confident consumers will get the price signals. He pays the equivalent of $0.75 per gallon to drive his EV, he says, cheaper than a gas-powered car by a factor of five in California, where gas is averaging over $4 per gallon. “EVs consumers will certainly get the pricing signal that comes from the utility, which is: If I get a bill, and my bill is high because I’ve been charging during the day time, and I know I can get cheap electricity at night, I’m going to go with the cheap electricity,” he says. Friedland and Rob Bearman both emphasize that EVs aren’t just cleaner and cheaper to drive; they are an important part of what Friedland calls a “virtuous cycle” – all-electric cars powered by renewable energy, stored and distributed, in part, by batteries. “Electric vehicles have the promise of taking cars off oil, and electric vehicle batteries have the promise of making the grid more renewable. As far as a cleantech solution that spans a lot of sectors in the cleantech industry, electric vehicles are really powerful,” says Rob Bearman. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on May 12th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pole Position Forrest Beanum, Vice President of Government Relations, Coda Automotive Oliver Kuttner, CEO, Edison2 Bill Reinert, National Manager, Toyota Michael Robinson, VP for Environment, Energy and Safety Policy, General Motors Dan Sperling, Member, California Air Resources Board; Professor, UC Davis Fifteen years have passed since a major automaker has attempted to market an electric vehicle. Within five years, rare will be the auto showroom that lacks one. But before EVs dominate the market, industry, policymakers, and consumers will have to grapple with some unresolved questions, says this panel of industry giants and start-ups. Those questions are a primary reason why “in pure electric cars, there’s very little first-mover advantage,” says Bill Reinert, National Manager, Toyota, “when you’re out there trying to figure out where the infrastructure’s going to go, and how the tow service works, and what happens when the charger doesn’t charge your car.” Dan Sperling, member, California Air Resources Board, disagrees that carmakers should avoid positioning themselves as a leader in the EV race. Yes, there are technology and scaling challenges, he says, but being first “does create a hallo for the entire company, which Toyota understands better than anyone – what the Prius did.” Michael Robinson, VP for Environment, Energy and Safety Policy, General Motors, is coming to see the benefit of that green hallo. His company has sold 2,000 units of its extended-range electric car, the Chevy Volt, since it went on sale in late 2010. Half of those sales have come in California, Robinson says, and 90% of total sales have been to Prius owners. Oliver Kuttner, CEO, Edison2, says carmakers need to figure out how to design electric cars to be lighter and more efficient. “If we were to re-think the way a car is built, and built the car in a more efficient way, like an airplane,” you could downsize the battery – the most expensive piece of an EV, costing upwards of $10,000 to $15,000 per car. During the Q&A, an audience member asks if automakers might be underestimating the demand for EVs. “Absolutely,” responded Forrest Beanum, Vice President of Government Relations, Coda Automotive. He cites Coda’s reading of independent studies finding that 40% of consumers want to own or drive an electric vehicle. What might make the difference this time is that carmakers appear to want EVs to succeed. It might seem counterintuitive, says GM’s Michael Robinson, but “we’re actually pulling for one another to be successful. We want the technology to be successful.” Dan Sperling agrees. “We’re way ahead of the regulatory process. We’re way ahead of the market process. Standardization issues are a challenge. This is a big adventure – and hugely important. We have to make this successful,” he says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on May 12th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tim Flannery Professor of Science, Maquarie University; Chair, Copenhagen Climate Council; Author, Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet Greg Dalton, Vice President of Special Projects, The Commonwealth Club; Founder, Climate One - Moderator Tim Flannery doesn’t do pessimism. Flannery explains the source of his optimism, a major theme of his new book, Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet, in this Climate One conversation at the Hoover Theatre, in San Jose. It stems from what he says is a popular misunderstanding of what natural selection actually is. “This is not a ‘survival of the fittest world,’” he says, referring to the phrase used as shorthand for Darwin’s perceived worldview. “This is a world where evolution has spawned extraordinary interrelationships, interactions, and co-evolutionary outcomes.” Over the last 10,000 years humanity has built what Flannery describes as a “super-organism” – a level of organization similar to that of ants, termites, or bees. And the glue that holds the super-organism together is the division of labor, interdependence. “That means,” says Flannery, “that the survival of the super-organism becomes all-important to us. We can’t afford to back up the planet.” And as “we form this one great super-organism, where we are all interconnected, we gain the capacity to deal with environmental challenges.” And for the biggest environmental challenge of all, climate change, Flannery sees reason for hope where others despair. Take COP15, the momentous United Nations climate change conference convened in Copenhagen in December 2009. Conventional wisdom holds that COP15 was a failure. Flannery disagrees. “I think it is self-evident it wasn’t a failure,” he says. The meeting was the setting for the largest-ever gathering of heads of state. Countries accounting for 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions made reduction pledges. Flannery sees progress across the map. China is a global leader in wind and solar energy, and is preparing to launch regional carbon cap-and-trade systems. India has enacted a small tax on coal and recently launched an aggressive energy efficiency trading scheme. South Korea is spending 2% of GDP on green growth. The European Union raised its 2020 emissions reduction target from 20% to a minimum of 25%. The United States is halfway to reaching its goal of reducing emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. “The job now for us,” Flannery says, “is to knuckle down and make sure that our countries carry their fair share of the burden. We need to have hope. We need look at things over the right time scale. And we need to re-gather the energy that’s required to carry this further.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Historic Hoover Theatre in San Jose, CA on May 4th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Member, United States Senate (D-CA) in conversation with Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One at The Commonwealth Club In this Climate One conversation at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, in San Francisco, Senator Dianne Feinstein touches on some longtime pursuits – national security experience and protecting the California desert from development. She also pledges to investigate the safety of the US nuclear fleet, protect children from toxins, and continue to shield California’s coastline from oil drilling. Feinstein is clear that clean energy is California’s future. “Energy is the largest source of new jobs for this state,” she says, citing an estimate placing the number at 100,000 additional jobs. Those new energy jobs – such as building large solar thermal power plants – should not be located, however, in the state’s undeveloped desert. “There is plenty of land in the desert that is disturbed that can be used. I think all of these [solar] companies are essentially finding other places to build, where there is no real environmental challenge to things that are endangered like desert tortoises,” says Feinstein. A trickier problem, especially in the wake of the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear complex, is how to ensure the safety of, and store spent fuel from, America’s nuclear reactors. Insufficient attention has been paid to the full nuclear fuel cycle, Feinstein says. “I believe very strongly that we need either regional or centralized nuclear fuel storage. It’s asking for trouble to keep hot rods in spent pools for decades and dry casks right along the side of nuclear reactors. I think they should be moved right away.” She also pledges quick action on plant safety. “I’m going to try to push as far and as fast as I can push to see that we really take a good look, a real examination, of all the facilities,” says Feinstein. Feinstein warns against the danger posed by exposure to chemicals, especially for infants. Of particular concern is Bisphenol A (BPA), a known endocrine disruptor, which, she says, is added to the inside of canned goods and baby bottles. “I become very interested in chemicals that are added that we know very little about,” says Feinstein. Though a proponent of greater energy efficiency (in the Q&A, Feinstein cites her decades-long quest to boost fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles as her proudest Senate achievement) Feinstein says now is not the time to raise the gas tax. “I’d go slowly on that. We have very long commutes for workers in this state,” she says. “This is not the time, when gasoline is this high, with the nation trying to pull itself out of recession. We need to keep gasoline below the $4 mark right now,” Feinstein says. She blamed speculators for the high prices: “Demand is down, and supply is even – so what can it be?” She reaffirms that oil companies should not look to California’s coast for additional supply. “The people of California have spoken through initiative. They don’t want oil drilling off the coast.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on April 27, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Measure What? Michel Gelobter, Chief Green Officer, Hara Eric Olson, Senior Vice President, Advisory Services, BSR Glen Low, Principal, Blu Skye Forward-thinking companies are coming to realize that sustainability isn’t just good for their bottom lines; it makes it easier to win over customers and compete in the market, say three corporate greening experts. As new tools such as carbon accounting software become more sophisticated and widely adopted, the panelists say, benefits will accrue not only to more efficient companies but to customers better able to trust companies’ green claims. First, says Eric Olson, Senior Vice President, Business for Social Responsibility, companies need to figure out whether they should they be listening to their customers, or leading them. Olson leans toward the latter. “There is a school of thought that says what we are talking about is so complex that what consumers want is for us to solve the problem for them,” he says. “They’re not going to sit down and ask for fair trade coffee – they don’t even know what that is. But they do know that they want a product that doesn’t have practices behind it that they wouldn’t believe in,” he adds. In a relatively recent shift, companies aren’t making green strides just because regulators forced them to. “Sustainability leadership about five years ago was very compliance oriented. Sustainability leadership today is about competitive advantage. It’s about innovation,” says Glen Low, Principal, Blu Skye, a sustainability consultancy. In a rapidly changing landscape, smart companies that pivot toward efficiency now, be they small firms or industry giants, will be big winners, says Michel Gelobter, Chief Green Officer, Hara.“There are a lot of companies, like a Wal-Mart, that are taking pretty aggressive actions right now,” he says. “The biggest value of scale is the size of the bets that you can win. The best use of large capital is winning big-risk bets. There’s a history of very big industries emerging from these kinds of pivotal moments.” Sustainability represents one of those pivotal moments, he says. All the positioning among agile companies looking to gain a green edge has led to a relatively new development, says Eric Olson: companies influencing policy in a progressive direction. These companies, Olson says, are clamoring for Congress to act, by stating: “We need a level playing field. We need incentives. We need long-term, predictable signals around the cost of energy sources in order to be as competitive as we should be.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on April 15th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cell Power: Sprint CEO Dan Hesse Dan Hesse, CEO, Sprint Nextel Sprint wants to be recognized as the green leader in the wireless industry, says CEO Dan Hesse in this return visit to Climate One. Hesse warns against the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile and announces the release of the fourth phone in Sprint’s green series, the Samsung Replenish. “As we meet here today,” Hesse says, “the innovative power of the wireless industry is under serious threat” by the proposed AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile. Much had already been written about the possible implications of the move for consumers and pricing, he says, “but to my surprise, very little attention had been paid to its potential impact on the wireless industry’s ability to foster innovation” – including innovation in the green space. “Wireless technology helps consumers by providing new ways to reduce, re-use, and recycle,” says Hesse. Take telecommuting. Just 3.9% of Americans regularly work outside the office, he says, even though wireless technology gives them access to the same information at their office desks. Hesse says Sprint is also working to address one of the industry’s lingering dilemmas: waste. Just 10% of mobiles phones are recycled each year in the United States, he says, meaning some 140 million phones end up in landfills. In 2008, Sprint set a goal to recycle 90% of the phones it sells. The new Samsung Replenish “is as green as we could make it,” says Hesse – energy-efficient, housed in recycled plastics, and made from 82% recyclable materials. In an effort to “take green really mainstream,” Hesse says, Sprint is lowering the monthly rate for the Replenish by $10 per month. The green moves and others – including connecting ECOtality’s Blink electric vehicle charging network, purchasing wind energy for its corporate headquarters, and upgrading the energy efficiency of its network – are done to improve the company’s brand, Hesse says, but also to motivate employees. “The thing about green is your people want to make it. They’re excited and love the fact that this is what we’re really focusing on, and that we have made it to a goal they care about,” Hesse says. “I’ve had zero pushback in getting people aligned and wanting to do it.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on April 15th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nuclear Power: Setting Sun? Jacques Besnainou, CEO AREVA Inc. Lucas Davis, Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley Jeff Byron, Former Commissioner, California Energy Commission This panel agrees that nuclear power, despite offering the promise of carbon-free electricity and safer next-generation reactors, is challenged by steep upfront costs and where to store spent fuel. Jeff Byron, formerly a member of the California Energy Commission, says the Fukushima tragedy offers the nuclear industry and its regulators a sobering learning opportunity. “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission just can’t go ahead and rubber-stamp license renewal applications,” says Byron. Uncertainty over how to proceed has put the United States in a bind, he adds. The US nuclear fleet is aging, with every reactor at least 30 years old. “We really want to retire them,” Byron says. “We’re extending the license of every one of these existing plants well beyond their intended design life. These are 50-year-old designs. I wouldn’t get on a 50-year-old aircraft if you paid me.” Lucas Davis, an energy economist based at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, warns against the prohibitive expense required to replace all of those aging plants. “If you look at lifetime costs, including waste disposal at the end, the levelized cost of nuclear, with updated cost and fuel numbers, is about $0.10 per kilowatt-hour compared to $0.05/kWh for natural gas. That’s a big gap,” he says. Despite the obstacles, Jacques Besnainou, CEO of US-based AREVA Inc., insists that policymakers maintain nuclear in the energy mix. ”I’m not saying nuclear is the solution. But there is no solution without nuclear energy,” he says. Lucas Davis agrees, offering that he’d welcome to be proved wrong on the question of costs. “Get in there and prove to us that you guys can build reactors on budget and an on time. That would change everything. But, to be fair, for 60 years the industry has been saying that costs are going to come down and the empirical evidence on it is pretty mixed,” he says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on April 8th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Energy Policy: What’s Next? T.J. Glauthier, Former Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy James Sweeney, Director, Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, Stanford Tony Knowles, Chair, National Energy Policy Institute; Former Governor, Alaska The United States does not have a national energy policy. In this panel convened by Climate One three experts long involved in the US energy debate conspire to shape their own. The plan: steadily increasing the cost of gasoline at the pump, replace diesel with liquefied natural gas for heavy trucking, harvest cost-effective energy efficiency opportunities, and boost the production of shale gas.“These are not new issues,” says former Alaska Governor Tony Knowles. “Unfortunately, I think Tom Friedman said it best: ‘Our national energy policy is more the sum total of our best lobbyists, rather than our best wisdom.’” Politics, not science or economics, has shaped our energy policy, Knowles says. A proposal recently put forward by the California Secure Transportation Energy Partnership, where Stanford University’s Jim Sweeney is a member, would add a penny per month to the state’s gas tax for 10 years. Tony Knowles cited a similar proposal recommended by the National Energy Policy Institute, which would increase the federal gas tax by $0.08 per gallon each year for 20 years with the goal of reducing oil consumption by 1.5 million barrels per day. Knowles and T.J. Glauthier, a former Deputy Secretary at the US Department of Energy, advocate for retrofitting the country’s heavy trucking fleet to run on domestic liquefied natural gas (LNG). “We’ve got truck stops all over the country. If we spent some money helping build out the natural gas refueling parts of those truck stops, and provide some help to trucking companies for the conversions, there’s a huge benefit,” says Glauthier. Jim Sweeney, Director of Stanford’s Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, emphasizes the abundant opportunity that exists for consumers to save money with energy efficiency improvements. We just have to get the incentives right. “People talk about those as the ‘low-hanging fruit.’ Unfortunately, some of that fruit has been low-hanging for decades now and hasn’t been picked, which means there’s a reason,” he says. Knowles and Glauthier also recommend that shale gas be a part of the energy mix. “It’s great for the American public, it’s great for the energy sector, to have natural gas supplies that are much larger, and they’re all domestic,” says Glauthier. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on April 5th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Duke of Energy Jim Rogers, Chairman and CEO, Duke Energy Outside of the Oval Office, one of the most influential voices in the energy debate is Jim Rogers, Chairman and CEO of Duke Energy. Here Rogers talks about the future of energy policy in the United States in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster. Rogers says Duke Energy will continue to pursue new nuclear power, despite movements by some governments to rethink their nuclear strategy. “With respect to Japan,” he says, “we will pause. We will learn. And that will make us stronger and better in the future.” Rogers emphasizes the safety record of US nuclear plants and the fact that nuclear plants supply 70% of America’s carbon-free electricity. “If you’re serious about climate legislation, you have to be serious about nuclear because of the role it plays in providing zero greenhouse gases, 24/7,” he says. Rogers emphasizes that Duke Energy is investing in advanced coal, solar, wind, and energy efficiency, in addition to nuclear. “From an investor’s perspective, and from our customers’ perspective, developing a portfolio is a smarter way to move forward than making a bet on any single fuel,” he says. Even though today’s Congress appears incapable of tackling climate change, Rogers says he is making decisions now in anticipation of the day a future Congress acts to limit carbon. A critical first step is junking old, dirty coal plants. Rogers notes that the United States electricity mix includes 300,000 megawatts (MW) of coal; 100,000MW comes from plants more than 40 years old and never retrofitted to remove sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, or mercury. “In my judgment those plants should be shut down, and will be shut down over the next decade,” Rogers says. Many of those obsolete coal plants will be pushed into retirement when greenhouse gas rules being drafted by the US Environmental Protection Agency come into force. Rogers prefers that Congress, not the EPA, show companies the way forward. “My hope, and the reason I don’t oppose [the EPA] doing it, is they act, and you see their rules – very limited because the Clean Air Act wasn’t written to do this. It will become obvious that Congress has to act. And maybe it will force Congress to do its job,” he says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on April 5th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ted Danson: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them Ted Danson, Actor; Environmentalist; Author, Oceana In the mid-1980s, actor Ted Danson was walking along a Santa Monica beach when he noticed a sign: “Water polluted, no swimming.” "Trying to explain that to my kid was hard," he says. Already wealthy and famous from playing Sam Malone on “Cheers,” Danson decided then to use his celebrity to raise awareness about the plight of the world’s oceans. “It sunk in that there is a lot that has come before us, there is a lot that will come after us, and that this time were are here is not just about us. It’s about stewardship,” he says. At Climate One, Danson talks about his life in activism and the manifold threats to oceans, the subject of his new book, Oceana. “No one disagrees that we’re headed in the direction where we could conceivably commercially fish out our oceans – no more fish, jelly fish soup – if we do not stop fishing destructfully and wastefully,” he says. Danson shares a statistic that points to one culprit: rampant overfishing by big boats. Ninety percent of the world’s fishermen are small-scale operations, harvesting from the sea as they have for millennia, he says. These fishermen account for 10% of the global take. The other 90% is harvested by the remaining 10% of boats, commercial-scale trawlers, some with nets big enough to snare a 747. Once the nets are hauled up to the boat, “a third of what the world catches is thrown overboard dead or dying because it’s not the fish they’re after.” The situation is dire, but Danson cautions against despair. He published Oceana, he says, to leave those concerned about the oceans feeling hopeful and empowered to act. “When you show up en masse in an email, you literally change policy around the world,” he says. “And it’s the best feeling. To not be overwhelmed by headlines, and to know you are doing something about it. You will know, in your children or grandchildren’s lifetime whether you succeeded. And that’s cool. That’s exciting. That’s not overwhelming or depressing.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on March 22nd, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cloud Power: Microsoft + Google (3/11/11) Rob Bernard, Chief Environmental Strategist, Microsoft William Weihl, Green Energy Czar, Google Greg Dalton, Climate One Founder, Moderator Arch rivals Microsoft and Google find common cause at Climate One promoting the energy efficiency of the cloud. Efficiency alone won’t solve the climate crisis, Rob Bernard of Microsoft and Google’s William Weihl say, but smart IT can reduce emissions, help green the grid, and save money companies and consumers money. “The very simple thing is that we can save money by using less electricity. So by investing engineering effort, investing capital in making our systems more efficient, we save money in the end,” says Weihl, Google’s Green Energy Czar. Google and Microsoft operate power-hungry data centers around the globe, so they have good reason to promote energy efficiency, but Weihl and Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist, insist that their efficiency gains will be shared as IT becomes ever-more integrated into the global economy. “I would actually bet that as a percentage of global electricity use that information and communication technology will use a higher percentage over time. But in the process it will make the entire economy more energy efficient. So, yes, that 2% will grow, but the other 98% will shrink, and shrink faster,” says Weihl. Bernard cites an example. Stanford researcher Jonathan Koomey, had, he says, looked into the carbon footprint and energy use resulting from the switch from CDs to digital music. “Even in the worst case, it was a 40% to 50% reduction in the amount of energy,” Bernard says. During the Q&A, an audience member asks Bernard and Weihl what can be done to overcome the barriers holding up even bigger efficiency gains. “Most energy efficiency work I would say actually is a no brainer. But people don’t seem to have brains,” Weihl says. One big problem, he says, is the disjointed decision-making practiced at many companies. “If you focus people on total cost of ownership, lifetime cost – capital, plus operating cost – and get everybody to think in those terms, not just in terms of their own budget, you can make a lot of progress,” he says. Bernard agrees. “More and more when I go and talk to customers, the challenge is much if not more governance and behavior than it is technology,” he says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on March 11th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Generation Hot Mark Hertsgaard, Author, Generation Hot Scott Harmon, Sustainability Advisor to Boy Scouts of America Alec Loorz, Founder, Kids-vs-Global-Warming.com Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One, moderator The climate change debate in America appears hopelessly stuck. If the US is to have any chance to break the stalemate, young people must get involved and force their voice to be heard, says this panel of activists convened by Climate One. For Alec Loorz, the 16-year-old founder of www.Kids-vs-Global-Warming.com, change will come because his generation and those that follow demand it. What’s needed, he says, is “revolution” one that “ignites the compassion in people’s hearts so that they realize that the way we are doing things now is not right and it doesn’t live with the survival of my generation and future generations in mind.” Loorz is organizing the iMatter march, planned for this spring, which aims to mobilize 1 million young people in all 50 states on the same day. “Youth have the moral authority to say to our parents, our leaders, and our teachers, ‘Do I matter to you? Does my future mater to you?” he says. Mark Hertsgaard, author, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, welcomes the activism of youth because the forces arrayed against them are so powerful. Oil companies “are the richest business enterprise in the history of humanity. It is not surprising that they have enormous political power,” but, he says, “the only way that you overcome that kind of entrenched money power is through sustained and very determined people power.” Scott Harmon, sustainability advisor to Boy Scouts of America, is mobilizing youth by harnessing the power and reach of the world’s largest youth organization: scouting. Scouts may march, Harmon said, but even more important is “to get them educated. I want to get their hands dirty doing projects that teach them about the solution.” He wants youth to do two things: wake up the parents and, when they enter the workforce in five or ten years, force their companies to become more sustainable. “We’re not going to get it done in our generations, even your generation probably [to Alec Loorz], so we better get the next generation, and the one behind that ready, otherwise we’re really toast,” he says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club on March 9, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

American Wasteland Jonathan Bloom, Author, American Wasteland Michael Dimock, President, Roots of Change A.G. Kawamura, Former Secretary, California Department of Food and Agriculture Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One, moderator The ubiquity of food in the United States blinds the mind to a tragic fact: much of it is wasted. Exact numbers are elusive, but estimates suggest that at least a quarter and as much as half of the food produced in this country is never consumed. A panel of food experts convened by Climate One says that much of the waste is unnecessary. Lest consumers think most of the waste ends up in supermarket or restaurant trash bins, Jonathan Bloom, author, American Wasteland, cites a study from New York State, which found that households account for 40% of wasted food. “In terms of the American consumer’s psyche, we’ve gotten to this point where we see beautiful food everywhere – the rise of food TV and glossy magazines – everywhere we turn, it seems, we’re constantly seeing images of food that looks pretty. Appearance trumps taste,” he says. “We have tremendous inefficiencies on both sides, pre-harvest and post harvest,” says A.G. Kawamura, former Secretary, California Department of Food and Agriculture. If prices collapse, he says, a farmer might not be able to afford to pay for the fuel and labor needed to harvest a crop. Fortunately, he says, groups such Farm to Table are partnering with farmers to offset the cost of a second or third harvest to prevent food from wasting in the field. For Michael Dimock, President, Roots of Change, the primary driver of waste in the food system is how we think. “It’s really changing our consciousness about what is waste and what is not. That’s the first step in combating this problem,” he says. There are reasons to be optimistic that the system is evolving, he says, citing the food separation and composting efforts underway in San Francisco and Sonoma County. Also encouraging, he says, is the increased interest in “food sovereignty.” Everything from families and communities planting and tending gardens to consumers “mining” trash bins at supermarkets and restaurants for green waste to feed to backyard chickens. “I’m thankful that we have a system of abundance,” says A.G. Kawamura. “Can we make it a system of efficiency? We’re lucky we don’t have a system of scarcity.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California on March 2, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Horsepower: Accelerating EVs into the Fast Lane Anthony Eggert, Commissioner, California Energy Commission, Transportation Lead Diane Wittenberg, Executive Director, California EV Strategic Plan Diarmuid O'Connell, Vice President of Business Development, Tesla Motors Marc Geller, Co-founder, Plug-In America Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One, Moderator Born before the Model T, revived and then extinguished a decade ago by GM, the electric vehicle is poised to dominate the global car industry, says this panel of transportation experts convened by Climate One. “The demand for these vehicles is greater than the supply,” says Marc Geller, Co-Founder, Plug in America. “Through this year it would appear that Nissan and Chevrolet have all but sold out of their first 35,000 vehicles, with the Leaf and the Volt. There are customers who are ready for electric and plug-in hybrids for many different reasons, but it’s really an issue of getting the cars to market.” Manufacturers are responding, says Diarmuid O’Connell, Vice President of Business Development, Tesla Motors, because this time there is a market, and money to be made. “This is hardly a philanthropic endeavor that we’ve taken on,” he says. One potential obstacle to widespread adoption of EVs is their (for now) higher upfront cost. Anthony Eggert, former Commissioner at the California Energy Commission, stresses the low lifetime cost of owning an EV. “You really want to look at total cost of ownership. It’s not just the initial purchase price of the vehicle, which is going to be higher,” he says. Diane Wittenberg, Executive Director, California EV Strategic Plan, agrees. “An average conventional vehicle, to drive 100 miles, costs about $6 in fuel; with pure electric, it would be about $2. Most people don’t know that off the top of their heads. It’s an education challenge,” she says. Manufacturers must also contend with customer fears that EVs will leave them stranded. “We should be clear when we’re speaking about charge time,” says Marc Geller. “We act as if these vehicles are actually driving 24/7, as if they’re all in taxi fleets. Most people’s cars sit 22 hours a day.” During the Q&A, a member of the audience asks how policymakers plan to replace sales tax revenue lost when drivers fill up with electricity rather than gas. “These vehicles will eventually have to pay their fair share of road taxes, to be able to use the system,” says Anthony Eggert, “but the actual impact to the collection of road taxes is likely to be negligible for the next 5 plus years.“ “That would be a high-class problem, as far as I’m concerned,” responds Tesla’s O’Connell. “Let’s hope that we’ll be solving that problem within five years.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club on January 13, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People Power: Rethinking Electricity Dian Grueneich, Former Commissioner, California Public Utilities Commission Mark Duvall, Director of Electric Transportation and Energy Storage, Electric Power Research Institute Ted Howes, Partner, IDEO Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One, Moderator The utility-consumer relationship is primed for a fundamental overhaul. Armed with information, formerly passive consumers will take charge of their energy future, say a panel of experts convened by Climate One. “A lot of the more forward-thinking utilities are starting to think about the ratepayer as a customer. That for them is a big innovation,” says Ted Howes, formerly a Partner at the design and innovation firm IDEO. Utilities are struggling, he says, to prepare for the complexity that comes with the new two-way relationship. “Oftentimes, utilities are taking it from a fundamentally technology-centered standpoint, not a human-centered standpoint,” he says. Mark Duvall, Director of Electric Transportation and Energy Storage Electric Power Research Institute, agrees that the customer relationship must change, but emphasizes the importance of the utility and the grid in a decentralized energy future in which many more consumers generate their own power. “If you decide that you’re going to build a zero-net energy home, put a lot of solar energy on the home, that doesn’t mean you don’t need the electric grid. In fact, you could say you need it more,” he says. Dian Grueneich, formerly a Commissioner with the California Public Utilities Commission, adds that the electrical utility sector will innovate much faster if nimble green tech start-ups are able to scale new technologies. “There hasn’t been much innovation or technology change in 100 years. That tells you there is a business opportunity.” What we haven’t seen, she adds, is for these technology innovators to master the arcane world of publicly-regulated utilities serving millions of customers. “You may have the best product in the world, but a state commission can kill your business plan overnight.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on January 13., 2011. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why Family Dinners Matter: How Every Concern Crosses Your Dinner Plate Laurie David, Producer, An Inconvenient Truth; Author, The Family Dinner Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One We are at risk of losing a cherished and nourishing tradition, the family dinner, says author and activist Laurie David. Producer of An Inconvenient Truth and author of the just-released The Family Dinner, David says a host of pressures and dangers threaten the family dinner. The culprits are familiar: long commutes; TV, phones, and video games; more women in the workforce; school events and extra-curricular activities scheduled during dinnertime; and the microwave. Despite the challenges, David says family dinner must again become routine, for the good of our children and our environment. “Family dinner can help tremendously with three of the biggest problems we face today: our national health crisis, our difficulty connecting with each other through the fog of technology, and our urgent need to take better care of our environment,” David says. Home-cooked meals are not only better for us, she says, but by gathering the family around one table, they create memories, and help kids develop self-esteem, resiliency, patience, listening skills, vocabulary, and empathy. “Our grandparents knew it, and most of our parents, too, that frequent family dinner can help protect kids from everything a parent worries about – from drugs to alcohol to poor self-esteem, low school grades, and poor nutrition,” she says. David admits it’s not easy to goad kids into leaving their computers or TVs for a sit-down meal at home. But, during the conversation with Climate One founder Greg Dalton and audience Q&A, David offers some helpful tips. One: get kids involved in the cooking. Another: prepare what David calls “participation food” – meals, such as soups, that kids can add to by tossing in ingredients at the dinner table. “We should think of family dinner as the most important activity our kids and our family can do,” David says. “It’s a nightly dress rehearsal for adulthood, a safe, dependable place to practice cooperation, patience, and manners, kindness and gratitude, and share stories.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on November 3, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science As A Contact Sport Ben Santer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Noah Diffenbaugh, Professor, Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford Uninversity Greg Dalton, Climate One - Moderator Confronted with overwhelming evidence of a warming planet, scientists have a duty to leave the laboratory and engage the public, say two leading climatologists. This Climate One program, titled “Science as a Contact Sport,” is a tribute to the late Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider, whose last work was a book of the same name. Ben Santer, a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Noah Diffenbaugh, Professor, Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford University, comment on Schneider’s legacy: cutting-edge research complemented by unmatched communications skills. Despite the need, Santer and Diffenbaugh say, Ph.D.s are not likely to receive communications training during their formal studies. Santer says he learned on the job; Diffenbaugh says he was trained only to communicate with other scientists. The omission is particularly worrisome with attacks against climate science, and its practitioners, ascendant. The attacks leave scientists no choice but to defend the integrity of their work and reputations, say Santer and Diffenbaugh. “We’re in a challenging position as climate scientists,” Diffenbaugh says, “in that there’s a very charged political atmosphere out in the real world. In some ways, it’s the path of least resistance to dump the information on the world, and then do it again for the next paper.” Santer and Diffenbaugh both describe a moral duty to speak out, as publishing alone hasn’t persuaded policymakers to act or silenced skeptics. “When I started off as a climate scientist,” Santer says, “I believed that if you did the best possible science, it would be good enough. Ultimately, people would do the right thing if the science was credible, if it was compelling, if the physical evidence was consistent, coherent. But it’s not.” As a result, he says, “part of our job, too, is to demystify, to speak truth to power when people try to demonize climate science and climate scientists. You can’t just be a bystander.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club on November 3, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Proposition 23: Yes or No? Bob Epstein, Founder, Environmental Entrepreneurs Nancy Floyd, Manging Director, Nth Power Jack Stewart, President, California Manufacturers Tom Tanton, President, T2 & Associates Greg Dalton, Climate One - Moderator The night before an election that would decide the fate of California’s landmark climate change law, a panel of energy experts convened by Climate One debates whether AB 32 would catalyze or cripple the state’s economy. The measure before voters, Proposition 23, would suspend AB 32 until California achieves four consecutive quarters of unemployment below 5.5%. Jack Stewart, President, California Manufacturers and Technology Association, and Tom Tanton, President, T2 & Associates, argue that with California suffering 12.4% unemployment, now is not the time to burden business with additional regulation. “There’s a lot of pain and very little gain,” in pushing ahead with the law, Tanton says. Stewart agrees: “Do we want to go forward and have a growing economy and hold off on AB 32,” he asks, “or do we hobble the California economy and make it more difficult to employ the 2.3 million Californians who are out of work?” Nancy Floyd, Founder and Managing Director, Nth Power, and Bob Epstein, Founder, Environmental Entrepreneurs, counter that cleantech is the fastest growing job sector in California and critical to maintaining the state’s competitive edge globally. Floyd says that 500,000 green jobs have already been created in California, and that her venture firm alone had invested $200 million in 35 companies in the state. Epstein takes issue with claims by Stewart and Tanton that California’s climate change rules would subject the state’s businesses to onerous regulations and uncertainty. “This legislation lays out a 10-year plan. For an oil company, they tell you every place you need to be for 10 years.” Win or lose on Nov. 2, Epstein says the fight over Prop 23 has succeeded in mobilizing interests – environmentalists, venture capitalists, utilities, and tech firms – with a stake in the green economy. “What you have done, by bringing Prop 23 to the table, is you united a community that really needed to be united,” he says. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Calories and Carbon Ken Cook, Founder and President, Environmental Working Group Whendee Silver, Professor of Ecology, UC Berkeley; Marin Carbon Project Helene York, Director, Bon Appetit Management Company Foundation Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One, moderator Grappling with the carbon impact of our food system is not easy. Faced with such uncertainty, Ken Cook’s simple advice is apt: “Eat lower down the food chain – better for you, better for the planet.” Cook, founder and president of the Environmental Working Group, joins Whendee Silver, professor of ecology, U.C. Berkeley, and Helene York, director, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation, for a discussion on calories, carbon, and the way forward. The panelists stress how far we’ve come in such a short time. “There was a time, not too long ago, that if you went into an organic restaurant, or tried to shop for organic produce, you really wondered whether the food had been harvested, or maybe had escaped,” Cook says. Helene York agrees, sharing the experience of Bon Appétit, which serves 100 million meals each year. Over two years, her 500 chefs reduced the amount of meat served by 20%. But, York emphasizes, they did so without scrimping on taste. “The real key,” she says, “is to offer alternatives that our guests want to eat. They look good. They taste good. They’re at a reasonable price point, and they’re appetizing.” Whendee Silver, who specializes in carbon number-crunching, stresses the importance of education. Researchers are valiantly attempting to assess the life-cycle cost of food, she says, but it is very hard to compare, say, the carbon impact of grass-fed versus feedlot beef. “There are big gaps in the data. Right now, many of the life-cycle analyses that we’re working with have pretty significant uncertainties,” she says. Despite the challenges, we can transition to grass-fed beef and seasonal, local produce, the panel says. “We have to be thoughtful as consumers about it. But I think people want straight-forward cues,” Cook says. “Take grass-fed beef. It’s more expensive to produce in many cases. But make that investment and that sector is going to start to grow.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on October 21, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Climate Fix? Roger Pielke, Professor, University of Colorado What’s the most efficient way to minimize the impacts of climate change? Public policy? Massive funding of new technology? Buying off emerging countries that will soon emit most of the world’s carbon pollution? Pielke, who is affiliated with The Breakthrough Institute, is critical of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He’ll explain why and offer his take on the state of climate science. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francicso on October 15, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One, moderator In just her third appearance before a US audience as secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton touts the potential of American innovation to further public diplomacy and to help tackle a host of global challenges. Before a sold-out Commonwealth Club crowd of 1,500, Clinton comments on global flashpoints – Afghanistan, Iran, and Mexico – while addressing climate change and clean energy. Clinton repeatedly stresses the need to leverage the creativity of Silicon Valley with work underway at her department. “Innovation is one of America's greatest values and products,” she says, “and we are very committed to working with scientists and researchers to look for new ways to develop hardier crops or lifesaving drugs at affordable costs, working with engineers for new sources of clean energy or clean water to both stem climate change and also to improve the standard of living for people.” In the Q&A, Climate One founder Greg Dalton asks Clinton if the State Department would reconsider granting a permit for the controversial Alberta Clipper Pipeline. Clinton concedes that while a final decision had not been made, the project is likely to go ahead: “We're either going to be dependent on dirty oil from the Gulf or dirty oil from Canada. And until we can get our act together as a country and figure out that clean, renewable energy is in both our economic interests and the interests of our planet.” Clinton also comments on Senate’s failure to act on climate change. “I don't think it will come as a surprise to anyone how deeply disappointed the President and I are about our inability to get the kind of legislation through the Senate that the United States was seeking,” she says. Clinton closes with advice for Ellie, a 10-year-old who expresses concern for the future environment. “I think that there is a lot that you can do, because it's been my experience that young people are much more environmentally conscious and committed to protecting the world you're growing up in than some of us older people are,” she says. “I'm out of politics, as you all know. So speaking as a private citizen,” she adds, to laughter, “I think people running for office should be asked to explain their positions on what they're going to do.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on October 15, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the Balance: Energy, Economy and Environment Part of The Chevron California Innovation Series Raj Atluru, Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Ralph Cavanagh, Energy Co-director, Natural Resources Defense Council Cathy Reheis-Boyd, President, Western States Petroleum Association Jack Stewart, President, California Manufacturers and Technology Association Virgil Welch, Special Assistant to the Chairman, California Air Resources Board Greg Dalton, Climate One - Moderator The low-carbon economy is California’s future. But this panel of energy experts convened by Climate One disagrees on how fast that transition will take, and how it will impact the economy. Jack Stewart, President, California Manufacturers and Technology Association, and Cathy Reheis-Boyd, President, Western States Petroleum Association, repeatedly stress that California could be more business friendly, and that green jobs alone won’t pull the state out of recession. “We all see a clean energy future,” Stewart says. “The question is: When do we get there? How fast do we get there? And at what cost?” “We cannot lose sight of the fact that we are not in a good state in California,” says Reheis-Boyd. “I can tell you my members are making some very difficult choices about where to invest their next dollar.” We have to get the rules right, the remaining panel members say, but they see no trade-off between environmental and economic good. “I think the energy history of California over the last 30 years is how to do both well,” says Ralph Cavanagh, Energy co-director, Natural Resources Defense Council. “Nobody is satisfied with 12.4% unemployment, but I don’t think the answer is doing less of what we already know we do better than anyone else. I think it’s speeding up.” For Virgil Welch, Special Assistant to the Chairman of the California Air Resources Board, it’s also about maintaining California’s global competitiveness. “The policies that we as a state are working on are not just what we need to do for our energy and environmental needs, but they’re critical to driving us towards where the global economy is heading, which is clean energy.” As long as California’s maintains its forward-thinking policy framework, green innovators will call the state home, says, Raj Atluru, Managing Director at the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “California has succeeded over the last century because of its innovation. We’ve innovated in entertainment, flight, defense, communications, PCs, the Internet. Our bet, at our firm, is that the next wave of innovation is going to be the green jobs economy. ” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on October 12, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Solar Surge? John Woolard, CEO, BrightSource Energy Karen Douglas, Chairman, California Energy Commission Lisa Hoyos, California Director, Apollo Alliance Greg Dalton, Climate One - Moderator A “perfect storm” of policy and incentives has made 2010 a banner year for solar in California, but for the boom to continue in the state and the rest of the United States, major obstacles need to be cleared, according to a panel of experts convened by Climate One. Karen Douglas, Chair of the California Energy Commission, BrightSource Energy President and CEO John Woolard, and Lisa Hoyos, California State Coordinator, Apollo Alliance, caution that the absence of a coherent, stable, and long-term national clean energy policy is holding back the industry. “One of the challenges in US policy is that … it’s been, ironically, perpetual and long term for fossil fuels, but short term and extended sporadically for renewables,” Woolard says. “We need a longer time horizon … at least five, more likely ten years, is reasonable.” Douglas agrees: “It’s terribly damaging to extend a policy and then reverse the policy. If you do that too many times, developers feel burned.” We also need to be able to deliver the clean energy to the grid. Woolard notes that over the past decade US regulators have sited 12,000 miles of natural gas pipelines but only 600 miles of power lines. “It’s like running interstate commerce without highways and rails,” Woolard says. If you can get projects financed and approved by regulators, it will mean jobs, Hoyos says. “Clean energy jobs are growing ten times faster than any other sector of our economy in this state,” she says. “We need to fully put our energy behind opposing Proposition 23 so we can continue to realize the benefits of AB 32, which is expected to generate in the next ten years over $104 billion in investment and other economic opportunities.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on October 8, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger: Green Light or Red Light Ahead? With an election approaching that will decide his successor and the fate of his landmark legislative achievement, California’s climate law known as AB 32, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger delivers a full-throated defense of his legacy. Schwarzenegger’s aim, he says, is to shed a spotlight on “forces willing to sacrifice this country’s environmental future for private gain” by pushing Proposition 23. “Oil companies like Valero and Tesoro and Frontier and Koch Industries are blatantly trying to manipulate the will of the people and the public good,” he says. “They are creating a shell argument that this is about saving jobs. Does anyone really believe that these companies, out of the goodness of their black-oil hearts, are spending millions and millions of dollars to protect jobs?” Asked by Climate One founder Greg Dalton if he welcomes Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman coming down on his side on Prop. 23, Schwarzenegger replies, “Yes, I welcome anyone who comes to our side and helps. I hope she uses some of her billions of dollars that she has and put it into the campaign to fight Prop. 23.” Schwarzenegger repeatedly stresses that California’s future rests on its ability to lead the transition to a clean energy economy, and that doing so would not negatively impact the state’s economy. Since 2005, he says, jobs in the greentech sector have grown ten times faster than the California average and are the single-largest source of new job growth in the state. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club on September 27, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Salt, Oil and Carbon Jane Lubchenco, Administrator, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Nancy Sutley, Chair, Council on Environmental Quality, the White House Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One A new national oceans policy will require a patchwork of federal agencies to collaborate on managing the country’s oceans and lakes for the first time, according to Jane Lubchenco, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. They told a Climate One audience the creation of a National Oceans Council should help streamline and centralize the fractured system that had existed before. “What we have is a whole new dimension of collaboration,” says Sutley. The pair’s enthusiasm for the new reforms was tempered by the dire state of the oceans and the manifold threats that promise to degrade them further. Lubchenco notes that the acidity of the oceans has increased by 30% in the past 100 years. That is compromising the ability of calcium carbonate-shelled creatures to make shells, she says, threatening the “rainforests of the sea” – coral reefs – and placing in jeopardy the base of the marine food web. How will the BP oil disaster affect the health of the Gulf of Mexico? Lubchenco says it will take years to really know. Of the 4.9 million barrels that gushed into the deep ocean, Lubchenco says ¼ was burned, skimmed, or captured; ¼ evaporated; ¼ was dispersed, naturally or by chemicals; and the last ¼ collected as sheen on the surface, in tar balls, or washed ashore. Lubchenco remains concerned about the very dilute but still toxic oil that remains below the surface. “Dilute does not mean benign,” she says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on September 8, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cradle to California William McDonough, Architect and Author, Cradle to Cradle Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One American architect McDonough and German chemist Michael Braungart started the Cradle to Cradle revolution in manufacturing and design. Now they want to drive that integrated thinking deeper into the heart of capitalism. How? By creating a startup in Silicon Valley. The Green Products Innovation Institute, which McDonough and Governor Schwarzenegger christened last spring, aims to transform the “making and consumption of things into a regenerative force for the planet.” The institute will certify products to inform consumers and encourage corporations to use cleaner and more sustainable materials and processes. Does the world need another green seal of approval? McDonough says it’s about much more than that. He’s thinking big about architecture, manufacturing and transportation. And with his track record, he has the ear of captains of industry as well as activists including Brad Pitt. Join us for a conversation with one of the leading lights of the sustainability movement. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on September 7, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The evolving status of women in the world today will be explored at The Commonwealth Club throughout the month of August in the series The Ascent of Woman. Through speakers, panels, films and art, we will examine this transformational period in women's history, this dramatic shift from the expectation of our mothers' choices, to how we work and live today in ways that reach out through our families and communities to reverberate throughout the nation. The Ascent of Woman series will illuminate women's lives today, where women are redefining what a 'woman's place' will be. Women Changing the Way We Eat Spin It Green: The Story of Marissa Muller Marissa Muller, Solar-Powered Bicycle Pioneer After graduating from business school in Spain, Muller returned home to California and worked with her family in building her vision: a solar powered electric bike. During her 1,000-mile solo adventure on the roads of California, she visited 14 high schools, offering a seminar on solar and electric vehicles, and sparking a dialogue with the students to start brainstorming ways to combat our energy and environmental challenges. Though the ride is over, her goal of reaching 1,000 clean ideas is ongoing. Meet this amazing young woman and hear her message of clean power. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club on August 19, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Power Shift: The U.S. Navy and Global Energy Reform Ray Mabus, Secretary of the U.S. Navy Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One Within 10 years, the United States Navy will get one-half of all its energy needs, both afloat and ashore, from non-fossil fuel sources,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus says. He believes that the US military can jump-start the clean energy revolution. “If we can begin to get this energy from different places and from different sources, then I think you can flip the line from ‘Field of Dreams’: If the Navy comes, they will build it. If we provide the market, then I think you’ll begin to see the infrastructure being built, the price per kilowatt-hour come down.” The Navy’s carbon footprint is vast – it consumes about 1 percent of all the energy used in the United States – and last fall announced an ambitious plan to slash fuel use and carbon emissions by buying hybrid vehicles, moving away from petroleum, and constructing energy efficient buildings. Mabus also serves as President Obama’s point person for recovery in the Gulf. Work is needed, he says, to modernize the technology by which oil companies respond to spills, and to update the legal structure under which they operate. “Obviously, the cap that was placed on oil companies, which was $70 million, did not anticipate anything remotely like this incident. The legal structure … needs to be updated to take into account realities as they exist today,” Mabus says. Asked by Climate One’s Greg Dalton what an appropriate dollar figure for the liability cap might be, Mabus replied: “I’m not sure there needs to be a cap.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on August 16, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) Undaunted by the death of climate legislation in the Senate this summer, U.S. Representative Edward Markey (D-MA) vows to reintroduce comprehensive legislation next year and guarantees its passage within a few years. “We have a responsibility to the rest of the world,” Markey says, “most of the CO2 which is up there is red white and blue.” Markey, chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, concedes that events in the spring, including the health care reform push and Deepwater Horizon disaster, conspired to distract attention nationally from the importance of climate legislation. But its demise was assured, he says, when Republican Senate leaders used the threat of filibuster “as a way of engaging in obdurate, obstinate opposition to this legislation passing – and time was their friend.” Markey also urges Californians to defeat Proposition 23. “You cannot lose this issue out here. It’s an imperative for you to beat back these two Texas oil companies. If you win here, I think we can win everywhere. If they lose here, they can lose everywhere.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on August 13, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After BP: Climate Progress? Joe Romm, Editor, Climate Progress Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress It is “morally unconscionable” for the fossil fuel industry, and the politicians who carry their water in Congress, to stand in the way of action on climate change, says Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm. A Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and former US Department of Energy official, Romm says California voters have an opportunity this November to defeat the forces seeking to delay action on climate change by rejecting an attack on AB 32. “There isn’t anything more important Californians can do than kill Proposition 23 by as large a margin as possible to send a message. Anybody who wants to save the climate in this country, who wants to pass legislation, is going to have to transform politics in this country so that there is a political cost to trying to destroy the climate. ” Confronted by such a grave threat, we need to act now, he says. Which means we can’t wait for technologies yet to be invented. More R&D funding for clean energy would be wonderful, he says, but “We need to deploy every last piece of low-carbon technology we have today if we’re to give the next generation a fighting chance.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco at The Commonwealth Club on July 19, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shai Agassi: A Better Model? Founder and CEO, Better Place In conversation with Greg Dalton, Founder, Climate One INFORUM’s Next 21st Century Visionary Award Shai Agassi wants to tip a $3 trillion market – the market for miles. Agassi, the CEO and Founder of Better Place, said he plans to end oil’s stranglehold on the global economy by offering consumers access to miles in electric cars that will be cheaper,and more convenient, than the gasoline-powered cars they replace. Most large and startup automakers are scrambling to make electric cars but Better Place is taking a decidedly different, and risky, approach. It is partnering with Renault and China’s Chery to deliver electric cars with batteries that can be swapped at new robot-powered stations. By taking the battery out of the up-front purchase price and essentially leasing it to drivers as a monthly service, he aims to offer electric cars that are at least $3,000 to $5,000 less to purchase than a comparable gas car and will be cheaper to drive each mile. “The price of oil keeps going up, the price of batteries keeps going down, the life of batteries is improving,” Agassi said. A few cars are on the road now in Tokyo and dozens are slated to be tested in Israel later this year. Will battery swapping take off? Will it flop? Or will it be just another niche? Agassi forwards his bold vision for the arrival of electric cars for the mass market. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on July 12, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hot, Wet and Uncertain Wieslaw Maslowski, Research Professor, Naval Post Graduate School Will Travis, Executive Director, Bay Area Conservation and Development Commission Andrew J. Gunther, Executive Director, Center for Ecosystem Management and Restoration Greg Dalton, Commonwealth Club VP, Founder of Climate One, Moderator What do scientists predict the Earth will be like in a few decades? While imperfect and complex, computer models using historic data and forward projections suggest deterioration of agricultural land, crumbling bridges and flooded roads, and population shifts away from low-lying cities such as Miami and Amsterdam. How fast will Arctic ice melt? What does that mean for the rest of the world? What are governments and businesses doing in the Bay Area and elsewhere to prepare for new water patterns that paradoxically may bring too much water at times in some areas and drought in others? Join experts for a discussion of what the past and present can tell us about our future. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California on July 9, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

America’s Climate War Eric Pooley, Deputy Editor, Bloomberg BusinessWeek Why is the national conversation about America’s energy future so polarized? Who are the true believers, power brokers and climate-change deniers working the halls of power in Washington? The political story of global warming includes colorful characters from activists chaining themselves to bulldozers and powerful lobbyists in the West Wing of President Obama’s administration. Pooley had extensive access to Al Gore in writing his new book, The Climate War. He offers his take on the forces battling it out in the big climate change showdown. Join him for a conversation about villains, heroes and the fight to save the earth. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club on June 24, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Merchants of Doubt Erik Conway, Historian, California Institute of Technology What do tobacco and fossil fuels have in common? A handful of scientists were able to obscure the truth about both threats to public well-being, according to author Conway. “Doubt is our product,” one tobacco executive reportedly said. Oil and coal companies borrowed a page from that playbook and have used it effectively to cast a cloud over climate science. The result? Opinion polls show that a falling percentage of Americans think climate change is urgent and, as the economy faltered, it has plunged as a national priority. Conway, an expert on the history of carbon dioxide measurement and climate science, offers a peek into the campaign against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the global scientific consensus that human activity is adversely impacting the Earth. This program was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco at The Commonwealth Club on June 11, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Corporate Sustainability: A Sprint or Marathon? Dan Hesse, CEO, Sprint When every company claims to be a green leader, how can consumers know which ones really are? Hesse will share his insights on why sustainable growth is sound business and can offer a competitive edge in an industry expanding rapidly around the world. What are the energy and environmental impacts of the global wireless revolution? Sprint has introduced eco-friendly phones and placed in the top 20 of Newsweek magazine’s 2009 Green Rankings of 500 U.S. corporations. How is it going to stay ahead of the green curve? This program was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco on June 8, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Drill, Baby, Spill Jim Boyd, Vice Chair, California Energy Commission Michael Brune, Executive Director, Sierra Club Dan Miller, Managing Director, The Roda Group Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President, Western States Petroleum Association What impact will the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico have on America’s energy supply? With the environmental and economic damage mounting daily, California has backed away from plans to drill off the West Coast. Will the United States also change course and shelve recently announced plans to erect a new generation of offshore oil rigs? As Alaskan supplies fall, will California import more oil from the Middle East? Or turn to Canadian tar sands? Will the oil spill drive investment and policies to spur biofuels? Oil on the shores of Louisiana will change the energy equation in ways we are just starting to understand. Join us for a town hall conversation about how to safely and cleanly fuel our future. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club on May 18, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reporter's Roundtable Are electric cars ready for prime time? And is California hitting the brakes on its climate legislation? Our reporter's roundtable discusses all these issues and more with environmental reporter Todd Woody and Craig Miller of KQED's Climate Watch. This program was recorded live on May 13, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

National Ocean Policy: Working to Protect Our Oceans and Resources Sarah Chasis, Director of Ocean Initiative, Natural Resources Defense Council Julie Packard, Executive Director, Monterey Bay Aquarium Michael Thuss, Director and Member, Texas Water Conservancy Association Warner Chabot, CEO, California League of Conservation Voters; Former Vice President, the Ocean Conservancy – Moderator The United States has ocean areas larger than any country in the world. The White House is considering a national policy to address the environmental and economic challenges that face our oceans, coastal states, communities, jobs and waterways. Join our distinguished panel to discuss this historical planning for the sustainability and health of our nation’s oceans and resources — for now and future generations. This program was recorded at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on May 13, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Youth Grabbing the Wheel: Young Leaders Speak Up on Driving Down Carbon Jason Bade, 19, Stanford Student; Co-director, Green Youth Alliance; California Climate Champion Gemma Givens, 19, UC Santa Cruz Student; Member, Indigenous Environment Network Shreya Indukuri, 16, Harker Upper School Student; Co-founder SmartPowerEd.org Alli Reed, UC Berkeley student; Real Food Challenge What would the move to a clean-energy economy look like if your kids were driving? Business and policy leaders often talk about preserving natural resources for future generations, and yet youth are rarely part of the conversation. In fact, they usually are on the margins or not even in the room. This program was recored in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California on May 4, 2010. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cap and Charade? Michael Shellenberger, Breakthrough Institute Kristin Eberhard, Legal Director, Western Energy and Climate, Natural Resources Defense Council Larry Goulder, Chair, Department of Economics, Stanford Would capping and trading carbon pollution create a prosperous clean energy economy? Or would it be a boondoggle for Wall Street and scammers in developing countries? While touted as a market-based way to put a price on carbon, cap and trade has been parodied by Jon Stewart as the superhero Cap N’ Trade and is increasingly questioned by environmentalists and regulators. Yet the state of California and many companies have a lot invested in a cap-and-trade system. Will it die a slow death? Should it? What would be a better way to create a global price for greenhouse gases? This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California on April 22, 2010. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forecast or Invent Our Energy Future? Vinod Khosla, Founder, Khosla Ventures; Former CEO, Sun Microsystems Predictions of peak oil and resource scarcity are driving investments in new energy and technologies. What will determine the winners and losers? What policies are needed to drive innovation and send proper price signals? Are incremental solutions such as hybrid vehicles helpful, or does the climate challenge require huge breakthroughs at the system level? This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California on April 20, 2010. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Global Warring Cleo Paskal, Consultant, U.S. Department of Energy Associate Fellow, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London The changing climate now has the attention of military establishments around the world. Last year, for example, the CIA created a group focused on tracking the national-security implications of desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts and heightened competition for natural resources. What will the opening of the Arctic mean for Russian access into North American waters? Will China's lack of clean, fresh water undermine its global ambitions? Will India's increasingly erratic monsoon affect its economic growth? These and other pressing questions will be answered. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on April 13, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices