[Fwd: [distributed-generation] U.S. DOT STRATPLAN EXTRACT: GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE]

[Ron Byrd <byrdelc@directcon.net>]

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• Subject: [distributed-generation] U.S. DOT STRATPLAN EXTRACT: GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
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• Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 21:21:57 -0600
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FROM http://stratplan.dot.gov/archive/

STRATEGIC PLAN SCENARIO: GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
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The following paper is excerpted from "Living with the Crisis: Economic and
Policy Implications," a lecture by Paula Alvarez Minogue, PhD, for the MIT
Center for Environmental Economics, January 17, 2028.

Itıs not the economy, stupid. Itıs not war, ethnic conflict, emerging market
debt or terrorism, either. No, the defining element of the world of 2028 is
the global environment and all that comprises it: air, water, weather,
health, coastal safety and, when it comes right down to it, the future of
the planet. At the turn of this century, few futurists could have postulated
such a scenario without being accused of hyperbole or rabid millennialism.
One did not need an advanced degree in an environmental science to
understand that current hydrocarbon consumption levels were unsustainable if
the planet is to live another thousand years. But very few, really, expected
to believe that the Crisis ­ as it has come to be known ­ would arrive so
soon, that the scientific evidence of the problem would be so clear and
compelling, and that not only the U.S., but the entire world, would
eventually get caught up in the response. But this is exactly what has
happened, is it not?

Unprepared 

Allow me to backfill with some key observations about the Crisis. First, as
a nation, we were caught unprepared. Notwithstanding the reports, studies,
government initiatives, Kyoto and Rio Protocols, etc., etc., some dating
back to the early 1980s, our preparation was minimal, right up through 2022.
Sure, the winters seemed wetter and the summers warmer, but the scientific
community could not reach consensus on what it all meant. The Union of
Concerned Scientists screamed for urgent action. But their warnings were
neutralized by data-driven skeptics who saw the freaky weather phenomena as
part of long-term variability, which could not be altered even if desirable.

So, inertia prevailed. Through 2010 or so, the economy remained rather
sound, if not roaring like the late 1990s. Unemployment was low, personal
income was growing, and Americans felt, on balance, positive about the
future. Consequently, the public wanted a small, efficient,
non-interventionist government that both stayed off the backs of the
citizenry and out of the way of business. The best government was seen as
small government, as local as possible, making minimal tax demands.

Whatıs more, energy prices stayed low. Developing-nation energy demand was
lower than predicted. OPECıs price increases were matched by more aggressive
exploration and field development, resulting in increased petroleum supply
and downward pressure on prices. The net result was that petroleum stayed
cheap and consumption remained high, even after Americaıs baby boomersı love
affair with trucks and sport utility vehicles was over. As evidence, recall
the indifferent mass-market introduction of alternative vehicles and note
how few Baby Boomers were among the early adopters. So, in terms of
meaningful environmental consciousness, Americans were ill-prepared for the
Crisis.

Advanced Technology

Technological preparedness was something of a different story. My second
observation is how incredibly fortunate it was that advancements and
innovations in computers, communications, software and networks accelerated
into the 21st century. In an open, global business environment, companies
needed to invest in more powerful and useful IT tools to create and deliver
products and services cheaper, faster and better than their competition. Now
it was the middle marketıs turn to modernize by automating production,
electronically track sales and shipments to reduce inventory, and share
information through ever-larger computer networks, including what we today
know as The Net. Business-to-business Net sales increased dramatically
between 2001 and 2005. The point is that by the time the crisis hit,
advanced computer technology, communications and applications were
widespread, not only here in the U.S. but throughout the world.

Weak Economy

My third observation concerns the relatively weak state of the U.S. economy
when the crisis hit. By 2011, U.S. and global economic growth was slowing,
after two decades of expansion. There were a number of contributing factors
­ a shakeout in U.S. equities, steadily rising entitlement payments
concurrent with retirement of the first baby boomer wave, upward pressuring
on prices and interest rates, and a pronounced softening in housing and
building activity. As growth slowed, unemployment rose and consumption fell.
Households hunkered down for what most expected would be a mild hiatus in
growth. The one fortunate piece of the global economic picture was that much
of the developing world continued to grow and develop, thanks to global
markets, mobile capital and open borders. The downside of this was that
emerging market growth resulted in increased competition for investment
capital. This effectively forced U.S. monetary authorities to raise interest
rates in order to be able to finance deficit spending and service the
national debt. Higher interest rates attracted capital but became another
drag on growth. 

Violent Weather 

What might then have been merely a cyclical and temporary slowdown turned
more severe and worrisome when violent weather began to have a notable
impact on economic activity, starting around 2015. By 2016, the government
was coming under pressure to act. Recall that it was in that year when the
President appointed the Gore Commission, a blue ribbon, scientific task
force charged with conducting a crash study on whether climate change was
occurring, and if so, why.

Meanwhile, as investors began analyzing the aggregate storm damage, global
financial markets grew edgy, as if aware that the worst was still to come.
The U.S., Europe, Australia, Japan and a handful of emerging nations
intensified discussions on collective crisis response measures and data and
technology sharing. The initial Gore Commission findings were released to
the public in 2018 and they suggested a high degree of causality between the
violent weather and the existence of high levels of greenhouse gasses in the
atmosphere. In 2019, the expanded Gore Commission findings were announced to
a worried public and anxious scientific community. In short, new computer
models unlocked the conclusive proof of global warming. Beyond reasonable
doubt, the crisis was real. It was man-made. It was disruptive of the
natural processes of weather and atmospheric dynamics. It would get worse
before it got better. Critically, however, the Commission report concluded
that the phenomenon could be arrested and reversed over the next century if
the major consuming nations significantly reduced emissions of greenhouse
gasses. 

The CrisisŠ 

As most of you realize, the turning point in our coming to grips with the
Crisis came in 2020, which was the first of the five worst years on record
for violent weather. That year alone saw four Category 5, five Category 4,
and eight Category 3 hurricanes in the Atlantic and the Caribbean, three
Pacific storms of note and three devastating monsoons in Asia. Besides the
unspeakable cost in human lives lost, the property damage for those years
amounted to a half trillion dollars in the U.S. alone and led to countless
bankruptcies and the failure of some of the leading insurance organizations
in the country. The damage to coastal U.S. properties and infrastructure,
including ports and roads, was immense. To bring services closer to the
people, the federal government devolved the Coast Guardıs marine safety and
environmental protection mission to the States.

Our neighbors in the Caribbean and Mexico were subject to even more extreme
devastation. Parts of South America and Africa suffered from drought. In
those early years, at least, we were able to provide financial and technical
assistance to rebuild housing and infrastructure. Unfortunately, as the
Crisis intensified and our economy grew weak, we focused humanitarian
assistance almost exclusively on our own country.

Notwithstanding the message of the Gore report ­ that global climate change
and its consequences could be reversed with a sustained, global conservation
effort ­ the U.S. governmentıs initial response was focused on emergency
relief efforts and restoring lost infrastructure in the affected areas. In
the midst of these emergency efforts, revenues into the transportation trust
funds were beginning to decline.

By 2020, we began to experience the secondary effects of the Crisis. These
secondary impacts are too numerous to discuss in great detail. I will simply
mention two here as an aside.

Agriculture was the first and greatest economic casualty. Much of U.S.
farming has been decimated by floods, drought or blight related to extreme
weather and temperature change. As to the extent of the damage, farm output
fell by about half between 2022 and 2024. While the situation from all
evidence appears to have stabilized, full recovery will be years, if not
decades, away. Fortunately, the U.S. possesses enough grain to feed itself.
But our exports have collapsed, and this has contributed to an economic
downturn in California and in the Midwest farm belt. Tragically, dustbowl
conditions characterize much of the Plains states today.

Public health has been another grave area of concern. Infectious diseases
and waterborne illnesses have proliferated at a time of healthcare spending
cutback and a large-scale influx in immigrants from countries suffering from
similar, but even greater, health risks. Malaria and cholera have reappeared
in the U.S. In communities with high population concentrations, heavy rains
have overwhelmed sewer and drainage systems, often causing toxic chemicals
and farm runoff to leach into groundwater. Towns and municipalities have
encountered and continue to face huge reconstruction costs as a result.

Š and the Response

The observable effects of the crisis, together with the scientific evidence,
were enough to give the President the political capital to enact sweeping
changes. In 2024, the deaths of Florida children from the Biscayne Bridge
collapse, followed quickly by the incredible images of the California
mudslides, were two powerful events that transformed public opinion. The
White House sprung to action. Within 45 days, the administration rushed out
two impressive sets of executive initiatives to deal with the Crisis. First
came a blueprint for an emergency global agreement to reduce radically
emissions of greenhouse gasses over a period of 100 years, with stringent
reductions in the first 10 years. The President also called for proactive
U.S. participation in the global reduction of emissions. Second came draft
domestic legislation to enable the U.S. to achieve its greenhouse reduction
goals with the least disruptive effects on commerce and the citizenry. The
latter contained the essential elements of the program in place today that
affects all Federal agencies:

*    

Forced demand reduction via an equitable and rational quota system for
domestic energy usage;
*    

State-by-state reforestation and water conservation quotas;
*    

Targeted public spending on infrastructure repair and rehabilitation;
*    

Increased public investment and incentives for the conservation of
resources, and accelerated development of low-polluting and alternative
energy technologies;
*    

Relief to communities most severely affected by the Crisis; and
*    

Creation of a new cabinet Department of Environmental Affairs composed of
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental
Protection Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

As you all know, despite year-to-year variations in intensity, this extreme
weather pattern has not appreciably softened since the onset of the Crisis.
Across much of the globe, Co2 emissions limits are now in place.
International organizations allocate emission credits to countries through
multilateral negotiations based on a comprehensive set of metrics including
level of industrial development, standard of living, size and density of the
population and rainforest content. The 80 percent compliance is testimony to
the extraordinary consensus that exists among developed and emerging
countries alike around the point that global participation in the greenhouse
gas reduction effort is essential for real change to occur. This did not
come easily, you will recall. Developing nations such as China, India, and
the Philippines had great difficulty changing household behavior and were
reluctant to accept international protocols until the impacts on their own
societies were clear and compelling.

Without the cooperation of China, Brazil and Russia, no other major nation
would have adopted the radically aggressive emissions reductions agreed to
at the 2025 Berlin Summit. Clearly, we in the U.S. are not alone in our
concerns. I emphasize that this unprecedented cooperation is critical not
only to achieve our primary objective of emissions reduction, but also to
build cooperative relations among our major trading partners. This is
essential, as we are faced with the challenge of enabling fundamental
changes in the way goods and services are produced, shipped and delivered to
consumers, based on new environmental realities. This requires cooperation
and reciprocity if we are to avoid distrust, protectionism and trade wars.

How are we responding? Let me start with the economy and work down to the
consumer.

The bad news is that notwithstanding the end of the recent recession, direct
and indirect impacts of the Crisis will result in slow economic growth and
relatively high unemployment for the foreseeable future. Private investment
is expected to be sluggish, which means that the government will continue to
be an important engine of economic activity and job creation. With the
federal deficit already high, there are limits to federal government
spending, but what is clear is that the American public supports an activist
government in Washington. This is a salient break with the past.

The good news is that early indications suggest that American industry is
coping successfully, even if considerable restructuring lies ahead. It has
not been easy. Research, product development, sourcing, production,
transportation, logistics, and distribution have all had to be reconfigured
on the basis of extreme emission reductions and therefore minimizing the
physical movement of articles of commerce. This difficult enterprise
continues. 

Much de facto de-globalization has already occurred, as U.S. producers
substitute local or regional supply relationships for past global supply
relationships located halfway around the world. Today, many long-distance
supply relationships no longer make economic or environmental sense. This is
creating unexpected import substitution opportunities for U.S. resident
companies. For them, competitive pressures are no longer as cutthroat as
when competition was truly global. Moreover, speed-to-market is no longer as
critical as it used to be. By just about any measure, the pace of production
and distribution has slowed significantly.

Operationally, major U.S. producers struggle to cope with disrupted supply
lines while forging long-term plans for regional U.S. production and
distribution much closer to final consumers. Much of the transportation
infrastructure is in disrepair because of severe weather and because there
is insufficient funding to maintain, rebuild or build new physical capacity.
Revenues into the transportation trust funds are declining because of
conservation in general and increasing use of alternative fuels and
vehicles. Business-to-business Net communications have flourished. Computer
models that calculate costs have all been recalibrated to reflect new
transportation patterns and costs.

Infrastructure adequacy is a large and growing issue. The congestion we knew
at the turn of the century has been replaced by congestion caused by sudden
rerouting of cars and trucks, backed-up inventory at ports and intermodal
nodes, and long waits for passenger travel. Ports, rails, bridges and roads
have all been hit by extreme weather. With global trade declining, the major
priority is rehabilitating domestic facilities, particularly in areas with
large concentrations of economic activity and populations. Demand for air
transportation has been flat and some think it may decline. Leisure travel
has declined as people take fewer vacations closer to home. For industrial
suppliers, rail and waterway transport are preferred alternatives given the
cost of air and truck transport. Air travel for business, particularly
international, has collapsed because of the expense and because IT and
telecommunications technology have enabled a wide range of alternative
communications media. For now, at least, there is adequate bandwidth to
support widespread ever more sophisticated data communications business
conferencing. To keep pace with demand, the White House is proposing an
expansion of the fiberoptic infrastructure and a revitalization of
laser-based communication development initiatives.

Finally, our advanced IT infrastructure also provides for advanced
electronic navigation support critical for storm tracking and, as necessary,
redirecting freight shipments. Thanks to satellite and sensor technology
developments, weather forecasting is extremely accurate.

How We Work and Live

Last, but not least, Iıd like to address the impact of the Crisis on the
consumer. As you can imagine, it is difficult to overstate or exaggerate the
lifestyle effect on the average person and household and the adjustments
required. The great majority of American households have lost savings and
real purchasing power as a result of the Crisis. Hundreds of thousands have
lost jobs. Wage growth is stagnant and the cost of living is rising. In
contrast to the frenetic turn of the century economy, we have more time and
less work, although it is true that those who must work additional jobs
experience even greater time poverty than before the Crisis.

Physically, we are moving closer together ­ by necessity, if nothing else.
Clearly, the new environmental economics prohibits long-distance commuting
in private vehicles. Housing in center cities and first-ring suburbs is
rising in value, with huge premiums on houses and apartments located near
public transportation facilities. Less affected are service and information
workers who can work remotely with the help of IT and advanced
communications. Rural America, unfortunately, is marginalized.

The Crisis has had a very dark side. Both crime and corruption are on the
rise. Looting is common in disaster areas while fraud, scams and
profiteering are widespread. There is a black market for illegal drugs and
booze as desperate people try to escape the bleak reality. Illegal
immigration and smuggling are on the rise as the U.S. is still seen as
offering a better life.

Many social observers have commented on how families have drawn closer
together as a result of the crisis. Since the start of the extreme weather,
we have witnessed the return of many retirees from Southeastern and
Caribbean Basin retirement communities at risk from storms and flooding, an
unexpected demographic shift. In addition, across the nation we are seeing
the return of extended families as fewer senior citizens can afford to live
on their own. Many have returned to traditional roles as childcare providers
for their grandchildren while parents are at work. In a world where
unemployment is generally high, there is great demand for carpenters,
electricians, plumbers, scientists, engineers, architects, para-medics,
nurses and doctors.

Families stay at home more. Weather permitting, inexpensive excursions, such
as camping trips, have replaced summer vacations at the seashore or trips to
theme parks. Children tend to recreate informally, in their own
neighborhood, rather than participate in organized activities that require
personal transportation. Middle class families can afford only one car. For
better or worse, we have seen the end of the Soccer Mom and the Hockey Dad!

Another important lifestyle shift is shopping, which, when not performed
remotely, must be carefully planned to conserve energy. We are witnessing
today retail restructuring in progress, with both traditional malls and
newer, central retail centers providing one-stop shopping for an
ever-expanding list of consumer services, including healthcare and even
church services. Electronic commerce peaked before the Crisis hit but still
commands a large share of total retail traffic. Today, however, consumers
have to plan on monthly, not daily or weekly deliveries, as delivery
companies are subject to strict conservation guidelines. For many families,
however, a trip to the shopping center is cheap entertainment in lean times.

The Outlook for the Future

We are living in a time of diminished expectations. The Crisis will pass,
but limitations on consumption will be with us indefinitely. The mistake
would be to think that the impressive global and national consensus on
working together to reduce greenhouse emissions will bring the kind of rapid
success that will allow us to return to our old energy-intensive lifestyles.
This is not the case.

Understandably, many Americans, including my parents in their 70s, yearn for
the old energy-rich days of air conditioning and shopping trips that did not
have to be carefully premeditated or shared with strangers.

The best I can offer is the hope that we as a nation will prove once again
to be clever, adaptable and innovative as we pursue imaginative solutions to
the energy challenge. Our strengths as a nation lie in our traditional
ability to meet sudden challenges and to work with our global partners in a
common response. 

However late, we as a nation have begun to make major public investments in
potential long-term solutions to our current consumption constraints. The
Hydrogen Energy Project is one such enterprise. When this and other
initiatives bear fruit, my sense and sincere hope is that Americans will use
their legendary ingenuity to recapture their lost freedom and mobility. 


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