Duh

p h t paine -- I have a difficult time understanding what you are saying will have anymore effect on the political needle than what Thom is saying.

Solar is taking off like a rocket in my area of upstate New York. I have a co-worker switching over in July....says the payment on everything is about equal to his current electric bill. So instead of paying the utility company, he makes equal payments towards his new solar set up, which will end up paying for itself.

Goodbye Carbon Barons!

The "bi-cultural" speech that Thom mentioned is called code switching. I've seen a comedian talk differently to a crowd of just black people than to a standard crowd (probably mostly white), even though both shows were going to be televised, so that people of all races could see it eventually.

In fact only nuclear energy is capable of replacing fossil fuels. These studies by Jacobson & Delucchi at Stanford have been consistently debunked as being nothing more than fantasies. What climatologist Jim Hansen calls "believing in the tooth fairy or the easter bunny". For instance:

Jacobson and Delucchi energy dreams are irresponsible fairy tales by Alice Friedemann

http://energyskeptic.com/2015/critiques-of-mark-jacobsons-ideas-to-run-t...

The Energy return on energy invested of the only scalable renewables, wind & solar, is well below the threshold needed to sustain an industrial civilization with any sort of social services like education, pensions & healthcare. Read it and weep:

http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/

So wind & solar are really parasites surviving off of the energy gains of nuclear, coal, gas & hydro energy.

The only scalable renewables California has, wind & solar, are too expensive to be viable on only supplied 12% of California's electricity generation in 2014, and that relies on big exports of peak wind & solar generation, with large imports of coal, nuclear & gas generation to allow the California grid to function. 28% of their electricity is imported. Not impressive. Exporting the highly peaking wind & solar only works when adjacent consumers don't produce much in wind & solar.

Ontario gets 86% of its electricity from clean, green nuclear and hydro, with 62% coming from their own indigenous CANDU NPPs. Makes California's dirty electricity supply, mostly gas with lots of imported coal look pathetic.

CA is also leading in electric cars. At Google in San Jose all of the close in parking has electric chargers and is for electric only. Also electric cars can use the HOV lanes which is a huge benefit. Even super markets have charging stations. Hopefully it spreads. Electric cars are a benefit if charged with renewable energy but not so great if charged by coal fired electricity.

Thom,

While the title of your post is accurate, it begs the question. In a representative government, the government has to be DIRECTED by the people to take action. We still live in a country of climate deniers. So the bigger question is, how can so many people be so blind?

You start out highlighting California as a model for energy, including a recent recovery. But their energy crisis 15 years ago was pure politics. It had nothing to do with natural limits. If anything, the issue to dig into there is how they made the political change. On the climate front, California is a disaster. Their real problem is water. In 1971, a scientific panel made a presentation to the California government which stated that the mid 20th century in California was an anomaly. California had not seen this much water for the past 100,000 years, and should not establish water policy based on such an anomaly. The real question to California leaders should be: what’s their plan for California as a desert? Thus the question, can California deal with its water politics?

You then jump to the issue of the other states and federal government, and hit the nail on the head: the fossil fuel companies (plus electric utilities). BUT, the nail bends and doesn’t go in. Even with all the fossil fuel propaganda, the major question is why do Americans allow themselves to be so deluded? My reply is the same long reply I provided for your article on the control of the denial cult’s kool-aid. http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2015/06/stop-drinking-climate-denial-cult’s-kool-aid .

But, let’s look in the mirror and ask if climate activists aren’t also guilty of drinking the kool-aid. We are. The biggest one is MYOPIA - what I call Single Sentence Logic. You describe how Stanford researchers claim the U.S. can go 100% renewable by 2050. That would also create many jobs, and reduce health problems. It's a good goal and we should do it. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg and misleading not to see it that way.

People reading this discussion should be very ALERT and CONCERNED by what is NOT being said. Would this switch to all renewable energy in the U.S. solve the climate crisis? NO! Why? Because it is ALREADY TOO LATE TO SOLVE the crisis the way most people envision the word “solve”. There is already over 400ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. By 2050, it will be higher because more carbon will be burned getting to 2050. It will take hundreds of years for the earth to reabsorb enough CO2 to get back to traditional levels. During that time, global heating will continue to increase and humanity will pay the penalty. But it will not just be a climate penalty. We are rapidly crossing the tipping points for depletion of available materials: potable and irrigation water, soil nutrition, ocean fish. We have failed to comprehend the dynamics of jobs, and how automation has fundamentally changed work. We have grossly failed to comprehend the impact of the internet on confronting the wealth disparity. We have entirely failed to comprehend the impact of infrastructure destruction from the wars in the middle east and 20 million refugees pouring into western society.

In summary, being more precise, I agree that only government level action can effectively “address” the climate problem. But the push needs to come from the people. For that to happen, the thinking of people must change so they understand, CLEARLY and DIRECTLY, how coming changes can radically affect their lives, and that they cannot escape those changes. New discoveries discussed at A3society.org explain why traditional communication methods have failed to achieve these changes.