Cosmic Reflections

“We see that you didn’t select a meal preference when you registered.” The young woman, eyes focus intently on the laptop screen in front of her, never looking up to make eye contact then asked politely, “Are you satisfied with Chicken? “
Gail nudged me and quietly pointed out the stack of yellow tickets sitting there on the table. Having just come back from visiting my younger son, Ben and his wife, Heather who are now several months into their vegan diets, I unthinkingly caved and responded, “I’d like to try the Vegetarian/Vegan meal tonight.” They had introduced us to several vegetarian restaurants in the Tampa-St. Pete area. I knew immediately my response was what the young woman was hoping to hear as she smiled. She was probably thinking, “…finally someone choose that vegetarian meal,” particularly since all I could hear from the people in the lines to both sides seemed to be, “Salmon please” or “I’ll have the Chicken.”

But it really wasn’t the Salmon, Chicken or Vegan entrees that motivated more than 600 well-dressed people to converge on the Denver Marriot that evening. This was the 2013 Gala fund raising event for Conservation Colorado – a non-profit formed 5 months ago by merging Colorado Environmental Coalition and Colorado Conservation Voters. This was an evening to honor the 2013 “Rebel with a Cause,” Dr. James Hansen, retired NASA climate scientist, and guest speaker.

At 6:45, the doors of the “Colorado Ballroom” opened and we quickly found our assigned Table 60 (there were 62) immediately in front of us just as we entered through the back wall of doors. As I scanned this enormous venue, it was obvious they could have squeezed in at least two more tables. (It was a “sold out” event.) Being the first at our table we of course choose seats facing in the direction of the stage. Delicious looking tossed salads and plated desserts were already at each of the 10 place settings around the circular table. Things were looking up as I placed my yellow Vegan meal ticket in front of my plate.

Fortunately the enormous ballroom was at least 10 degrees cooler than the packed silent auction breakout room we just left. There a crush of Gala attendees zigzagged around rows of tables overflowing with cleverly described silent-auction bargains each accompanied by a sign-up sheet encouraging us to bid often and bid high. Sweat was dripping down my forehead as I finally made it all around what felt like a tropical obstacle course of stationary piles of people just talking, not moving, and just blocking the narrow path between tables. And they were not bidding either. I was still in the blue section of the room (conveniently denoted by a dozen blue balloons hanging from the ceiling over this section of tables,) when I bumped into, literally, some old friends I hadn’t seen for years. So we became another people pile and forced the stream of potential bidders to squeeze by us to either side as we “caught up” on the past 15 years. Of the hundreds of items in the silent auction, there were only a few that seemed to say “write 118 on the next line.”
(Bidder 118 did end up leaving the Marriot that evening with several items and new charges on his credit card account.)

More and more people were now streaming into the ballroom as the 7:00 pm serving time neared. Each new person seemed to bring along another increment of ever increasing background noise as well. Finally a booming ear drum bursting voice towered over the general chatter requesting that we all sit down so that the food service could begin. Fortunately the voice was visible on the two Jumbotron screens at the front of the room so we could see the distant speaking figure was actually the Conservation Colorado Executive director.

Alas, servers suddenly seemed to appear from all directions carrying their large waiter-trays of covered plates. The meal to my left arrived and looked appetizing – chicken. Then Gail’s salmon was professionally presented over her right shoulder and it too looked delicious. Was I salivating? I hoped no one else at the table noticed. As I tried to exercise patience, I couldn’t help but notice there were still two plates missing at our table. Eventually a server carrying the missing entrees appeared. The server uncovered my quite attractive presentation of a triangular section of tofu sitting atop a circular piece of browned tofu surrounded by a corral of four asparagus spears – I love asparagus – all on a colorful swirled layer of tomato puree. Fortunately I had been well coached by my son and daughter-in-law just two weeks earlier when I ordered curry chicken at their local vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant. The curry was quite good and very recognizable; the chicken was disguised as tofu – or the other way around. Gail had ordered Vietnamese caramelized fish – it too was undercover tofu; I had never tasted browned tofu before. Having had that prior training, I was able to envision my Gala 2013 triangular tofu as some little known breed of chicken and my round tofu as probably a yet-to-be-documented sea creature. The asparagus was crisp, tender and definitely the highlight of the plate. Life is good. And the dessert was outstanding.

After the long Live Auction expected at an annual fund raising event, the keynote speaker was introduced and Dr. Hansen slowly began his talk. As an engineer, I know that a meticulous scientist is not always a riveting speaker. It was clear from the beginning that he had dedicated his life to a search for the truth in the ever evolving field of science. We also know that during his career, attempts were made to censor his work – especially those results that indicated there were anthropocentric causes for global warming and climate change. Although he never mentioned it that evening, those of us who have followed his decades of scientific research focused on measuring CO2 levels in our atmosphere and the resulting climate change, know that he could have said, “I told you so,” but he didn’t.

In his own quiet way, James Hansen had lived the professional life of a NASA scientist seeking the truth in the Real World of an every expanding, ever evolving Universe – despite perverse attempts to ridicule his work and suppress his results . Now we see Dr. Hansen has evolved into a Rebel with a Cause. (He has been arrested several times for civil disobedience – the latest was on February 13, 2013 when he and about 100 others chained themselves to the fence in front of the White House in protest of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Hansen claims that opening the Keystone XL spigot for the development of Canadian Tar Sands oil would be game over for the climate. ) Now retired, knowing the science of climate change is clear enough to take action, he has become an advocate of change in the human-created ‘real world.’ He speaks of his grandchildren and what we can do today to change our broken economic/political system so that it influences us to make choices that assure that the world we hand off to future generations is a habitable and healthy Planet for all Life.

Knowing that he would have been preaching to the choir, Dr. Hansen did not present any charts or statistics that evening because the science of climate change is clear and this group of Americans needed no convincing.
In his brief keynote address, Dr. Hansen cautioned us not to rely on the present economic system to fix the problem we have created by our past 150 years of burning ancient hydrocarbons.
“As long as carbon fuels are (perceived to be) cheap, we will continue to use them.”

He went on to advocate that we
“… Put a price on carbon (to account for the externalities, i.e. the costs that the fossil energy industry ignores) & let efficient energy compete fairly.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Although Dr. Hansen did not go into any further detail about the “carbon price” the idea is relatively simple and intended to be a revenue-neutral bi-partisan approach. Revenue-neutral means that all the revenue from the fee is returned to the tax payers so there is no growth in government. Here’s how it works. A fee is added to all forms of carbon that are extracted from the Earth based on the amount of CO2 they produce when burned. For every ton of CO2 produced, there will be a fee of say $25 initially. The revenue derived from assessing this fee on carbon will then be return to each and every U.S. citizen on a monthly or quarterly basis as a “carbon dividend.” The dividend is intended to help us offset the externalized (ignored) costs of these carbon products. Those citizens who transition to carbon free renewable energy will not be paying this fee, but will still be receiving the periodic dividend. Those citizens who choose to use excess amounts of coal, oil, or natural gas will pay more fees than is being offset by their dividends. The fee is scheduled to increase over time, as will the dividend making the use of carbon free energy more economical. For more details on how the carbon fee/dividend program will work, see Citizens Climate Lobby website. See a Draft of the Legislative Proposal

AND in keeping with the philosophy that we “fix” our economic system so that it no longer ‘externalizes’ the costs of burning ancient hydrocarbons (so called fossil energy) by adding a carbon burning fee, it is consistent to use the same philosophy for the nuclear power industry.

To date, the nuclear industry has been able to externalize their costs involved in safely dealing with the waste materials they produce during their operation and the reparation cost of “accidents” that continue to occur as well as the complete decommissioning costs of all nuclear reactors. We can only begin to imagine what costs Japanese children of today will have to pay during their lifetimes because of the multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster site in March 2011.

In a sustainable world, the Earth’s resources are borrowed and returned / 100% recycled at the end of use. There is no waste. For a sustainable planet, Life is an ongoing process of birth and death – sometimes referred to as ‘cradle to cradle.’ When an individual form of life ceases, its stored energy and the atoms from which it is made become a source for another form of life – often a more complex form higher on the food network. Cradle to Cradle is how humans must learn how to live sustainably. We cannot afford to squander Earth’s resources and contaminate these valuable building blocks for future generations so they are no longer usable for thousands of years. 1.9 million non-human species have evolved on Planet Earth to harvest the energy they require to live sustainably from the Sun (directly or indirectly) and we humans can too.

We would simply like to build on Dr. Hansen’s considered approach with the following advocacy:
“Put a price on carbon AND nuclear waste by-products (to account for all externalities including ‘accidents’ and ‘spills’) & let efficient energy compete fairly.”

Summoning the personal will power to transition from a naturally evolved carnivore to a vegan is my challenge.

Summoning the political will to transition America from a Fossil Extraction/Nuclear Fission nation to a Sun Harvesting nation in right relations with all Life is our challenge.