Cranberry Crossing

George Callas (of Newforest Institute) and I went to the Cranberry Isles yesterday to consult with the Cranberry Isles Sustainability Initiative, a group of concerned citizens worried about energy independence and climate change. The height of land on Islesford (according to Google Earth) is 25 meters, and many houses are close to sea level, while fuel costs there are higher than the mainland because fuel must be barged in. On the upside, there is a lot of blowdown spruce firewood available for free, or more correctly for the cutting and hauling, and the islanders typically burn several cords each a year.

We gave some talks, had a lot of nice conversations around the kitchen table with our hosts, and walked through some buildings to look at efficiency savings. We took pains to make sure folks knew that a walk-through is not a proper Home Energy Audit -- that would take several hours and quite a bit of puzzling to do properly. But George is a Maine certified Home Energy Auditor.

Me, I'm just a guy who likes to work on buildings, who happens to have a PhD in environmental policy. I really have no business giving building advice. But I am qualified to talk about the US policy environment for climate change and energy efficiency, which is really my gig, and as a sideline, of course, like all policy wonks, I am quite able with cost benefit analysis, which is the basis of energy audit (and climate mitigation) theory. So I am perfectly within my rights and street-legal to talk about payback and the costs and benefits of different energy technology.

That doesn't stop me opening my big mouth, though, if I can see daylight through the cracks in someone's basement. I have several ongoing home energy experiments, including the Bale House. And I am inordinately fond of spray foam.

As is the case all over Maine, few buildings on Little Cranberry that we saw, although all nice comfortable houses, were anywhere near their optimal tightness and insulation standards, and in each case we could identify several steps that homeowners could take, if they had time and money, to save energy, with possible heat energy savings up to 60% or more easily available.

George and I, being used to the colder temperature regime of northern Waldo County, took a few walk-throughs to adjust to the energy use data that islanders were reporting. An ordinary home with no serious upgrades as yet on Little Cranberry might only use 4-5 cords of mixed softwood/hardwood, and 200 gallons of heat oil. Here in Northern Waldo, that would be a more likely energy consumption for a more efficient home. Our old Great Farm farmhouse, which at this point is quite well insulated and medium tight, with upgrades throughout, still uses five cords hardwood and about 50-70 gallons of heat oil, and even George's celebrated earth-bermed mansion uses three cords. But the islanders can still save some energy despite their more temperate climate. And given the need to barge in fuel oil and propane, the costs savings per gallon are higher.

Funnily enough, on the ferry over we ran into a climate denier. George and I were chatting amiably about the things we usually chat about -- climate policy, energy efficiency, homesteading, and he was right across the aisle from us listening in. Eventually he piped up. He was more than a little derisory and very hard to talk to, being an aggressive interrupter, among other less-than-pleasant and less-than-reasonable conversational traits.

Regular readers will know that I've run into climate deniers before, and have more than a few theories about why they do what they do. I actually studied the former Wise Use movement, a similar backlash, for part of my dissertation, identifying both funding pathways and mental models which might be used by any future climate backlash. That prediction, of course, came true, and the climate backlash is now well and truly with us and has been for a while. The funding pathways for backlash theory have morphed from the former "Greening Earth" coalition, to ExxonMobil's funding of the George Marshall Institute and other groups. The mental models remain similar to former backlashes like the Wise Use Movement and John Birch society.

In the same way that a visible (and predictable) trace of antisemitism ran through German society, through German romantic poets and philosophers through Hegel to Haeckel to Hitler, a trace of super-conservative, hyper-Protestant, "backlash" theory runs through American society, from the Know-Nothings through the Isolationists to the John Birchers and Wise Users.

Don't get me wrong here. It isn't the same theory. Climate deniers are not Nazis, but their own very different thing. But the peculiar thread of American political tradition they come from in US society is quite old and definitely predates the climate issue. In the same way that Swiss society, for instance, remains influenced by Calvin hundreds of years after Calvin's death.

Once you know what you're dealing with here, you can try to predict outcomes.

Unlike the Nazi movement in Germany, this particular thread of political theory has never really gained full political power in the US. Instead, it wields occasional influence. Our current President, as I also showed in my dissertation, is or has been influenced by their trace of thought, but has other more powerful influences from the Republican mainstream than are in some tension with the backlash, such as the current quite strong business lobby for climate policy.

What happens is that events overtake the movement, events that negate the movement's theory, the American public shifts its interest, and the movement fades, although is never quite eliminated. This can take a long time, and events in some ways have to proceed until the movement's theory is reduced to an absurdity.

So the isolationists were believable and many of the American public, unbelievably, believed them, right on through the invasions of the Rhineland, the Sudetenland, Austria and Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and France. Somehow the American public just kept on believing the isolationist theories, which were multiple, that either Nazi Germany wasn't so bad and wouldn't kill the Jews and other victims of the holocaust (did they bother to read Mein Kampf?), or that even if war did break out, America should somehow keep peace with Germany and worry only about Japan. There were other versions, all of which seem absurd now, to various degrees.

Climate change, in the same way, will claim more and more territory for itself until this theory is reduced to an absurdity.

Unlike a lot of Europeans, I have a good deal of faith in America and Americans. This probably comes from knowing my British and my family history very well. Britain, alone, could only prevent Hitler from winning, primarily through the actions of my former service, the RAF, in the Battle of Britain, and through the foresight of Winston Churchill. We couldn't defeat him without the US. This is personal for me. My hometown was blitzed, dad was bombed out of his house, my mother was buzzed by a buzz bomb, and I'm quite sure I would not have liked growing up in Nazi-dominated England. The first black man my mother saw was an American GI, and he was, in no small way, one of her personal saviors, and rightly a hero. Too many Europeans have conveniently forgotten these American heros.

I haven't. I see them everyday, everywhere I go, even on the Isleford Ferry. But we need to remember that just a year or two or less before Pearl Harbor, most of these heros were isolationists.

They are the decent independent minded American, who comes to his or her own conclusion in his or her own sweet time, but when he or she does, well, watch out.

The US is a mighty vessel and takes a while to swing around. The Isolationists, Know-Nothings, Wise Users or Climate Deniers are standing in the bridge, yelling at the Captain at the top of their lungs to get him to keep the vessel on track. But the Captain is getting yelled at by lots of other folks on the bridge too. Eventually, he gives the order and the vessel swings around and, once again, civilization is saved. The Know-Nothings slink away to wait for their next opportunity.

The Captain, by the way, is not the President. We need to remember this too. The Captain is the Ameican people, and the order is that small thing called the vote.

In the meantime, the enemy is gaining territory. Pacific Islands, Bangladesh, Burma, these are succumbing to increased cyclone and storm frequency, combined with the slightly higher sea level. Sub-Saharan and North Africa, Australia, Southern Europe, and parts of the American west are succumbing to drought and in some cases wildfire. Millions of people are already at risk and thousands dying, mostly from the increased wars and competition for resources that hits when climate changes, but also from climate insecurity itself, particularly extreme weather.

The climate denier position is reduced more and more to an absurdity with each passing year. But they are still yelling at the Captain, and they haven't slunk away yet. A few of them are beginning to. Read this article below to read about the latest:


Exxon to cut funding to climate change denial groups

* David Adam
* guardian.co.uk,
* Wednesday May 28 2008

The oil giant ExxonMobil has admitted that its support for lobby groups that question the science of climate change may have hindered action to tackle global warming. In its corporate citizenship report, released last week, ExxonMobil says it intends to cut funds to several groups that "divert attention" from the need to find new sources of clean energy.

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