David Weinberger

 

Recent Posts by David Weinberger

  • Millennials are Committed to a Multidimensional Approach to Saving the Environment

    Apr 9, 2012David Weinberger

    Reports that Millennials don't care about the environment may not take into account their creative and comprehensive approaches to creating a cleaner planet.

    Reports that Millennials don't care about the environment may not take into account their creative and comprehensive approaches to creating a cleaner planet.

    Students in the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network are routinely faced with a number of challenges as they develop and promote their ideas for change. From disenfranchisement to flat-out mockery, from being ignored to antagonized, Millennials often find that their efforts are not taken seriously.

    Add to that list this recent report from a University of San Diego professor, which claims that Millennials are less concerned with environmental protection than our parents and grandparents were at our age. Accusations of flawed research methodology aside, the report doesn't take into account the tremendous work being done by a number of environmental groups such as 350.org, the Sierra Club, USPIRG, Green for All, I.D.E.A.S., and of course, the Campus Network, all of which claim young people as the majority of their active bases.

    Perhaps one reason that Millennials' environmental concerns appear undetectable is that researchers are accustomed to a very particular, narrow approach to measuring environmental awareness. Millennials view environmental protection more as a value to be incorporated into all policymaking than as its own, isolated discipline. We are concerned with economic growth, job creation, enhancing public health, bolstering educational achievement, and national security and diplomacy. Young people recognize that each of these concerns is inextricably tied to the environment and see environmental health and protection as a means to arriving at any of these outcomes.

    To compare the environmental movement of the 1970s to the work of young environmentalists today is also to ignore the changes in sentiment and the nature of the challenges that have occurred over the course of the past 40 years. While environmentalists of years past were primarily aiming to bring clean air and clean water concerns into the national policymaking calculus, environmentalists today are far more worried about solving global problems like climate change by using local environmental solutions.

    We are a generation of innovators and entrepreneurs. We are pioneering new and exciting strategies to shake the country's dependence on oil and other nonrenewable resources, remedy environmental damages, and ensure that all Americans have access to clean air and water.

    Common to many of the ideas that came out of the Campus Network this year is a fundamental belief in the potential of market-driven innovations for reducing natural resource consumption and encouraging the development of renewable energy sources. Young progressives have come to understand the power of the market in shaping consumer behavior. Campus Network students are uniquely aware of the powerful role that public-private partnerships can play in reforming energy markets.

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    For proof that there is life in the youth environmental movement, one need look no further than the Campus Network's 10 Ideas for Energy and the Environment. Students from around the country submitted ideas to be considered for publication in this year's journal. Students' policy recommendations ranged from innovative ways to develop offshore wind power to a novel approach to encouraging brownfield development.

    In particular, students are looking at ways to use policy mechanisms to reduce demand for energy without forcing families to take a hit. Erin Hiatt, a student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, suggests that the U.S. Department of Energy should repurpose the "Cash for Clunkers" model that worked well to bolster sales of high-efficiency cars for the market for appliances. By offering financial incentives to consumers looking to offload their old, energy-guzzling home appliances in favor of newer and more efficient models, this program stands to reduce Americans' demand for oil while minimizing costs and inconvenience for households.

    At the same time that they are finding painless ways to reduce energy demand, many students are also looking at new sources of energy. Stewart Boss, another student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, supports bills and policies that help make offshore wind turbines a reality and ensure that electric utilities sign on. Recognizing that the country has a huge amount of potential offshore wind power that we're not making use of, he drills down on what it would take to tap into this clean resource.

    Another interesting idea to emerge from the Campus Network this year is from Cornell University student James Underberg. James proposes that New York State should allow agencies to internalize environmental and labor costs when choosing among bidders for a development contract. Another example of Millennials' attention to the crosscutting nature of environmental values across policy areas, James's idea would shift the development paradigm in his state from a one-dimensional cost consideration to a holistic determination that takes environmental damage into consideration.

    The Millennial green movement is a movement of future economists, health experts, rights activists, educators, and diplomats, each aware of the interrelation of their disciplines to the global fight for environmental protection. Whether you see them or not, the leaders of tomorrow are already working around the clock to find ways to reform the market to reflect this generation's demands for a cleaner future.

    David Weinberger is the Senior Fellow for Energy and Environment at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a senior at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

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  • Millennial Pulse

    Keystone Reveals Consensus on Infrastructure Jobs -- So Where Are They?

    Jan 20, 2012David Weinberger

    need-job-150Republicans and Democrats both agree: infrastructure projects create jobs. So is anyone going to pass a plan and put people to work?

    need-job-150Republicans and Democrats both agree: infrastructure projects create jobs. So is anyone going to pass a plan and put people to work?

    President Obama issued an announcement this week that he has rejected the Keystone XL pipeline as it currently exists, a move that effectively cancels the long-debated project for the foreseeable future. As expected, the reaction from Republicans has been anything but positive, as conservative members of Congress have lamented the thousands of potential jobs lost as a result of the project's cancellation. As they complain, there are obviously inconsistencies between the jobs rhetoric now emerging from the right and Republicans' opposition to the president's American Jobs Act in September of last year.

    Transcanada's controversial Keystone XL pipeline project would have brought natural gas and oil 1,700 miles, from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada through six states and down to the Gulf Coast. Yesterday's announcement was not the first time President Obama had attempted to cancel the pipeline. In November, the White House delayed his decision, opting to wait until 2013 for the State Department to review an alternate route that would avoid regions that environmentalists had identified as being highly environmentally sensitive. This delay was considered a fatal blow for the project and a boon for President Obama, who would not be required to issue an official decision until after the election in November.

    But as part of the tax deal he cut with Republicans at the end of last year, the president was required to make a decision on the pipeline by February 21. Republicans in Congress and right-leaning pundits see Keystone XL as a symbol of jobs creation and a sure way to restore the national economy. Congressional Republicans hoped that by pushing up the decision to before the election they would be able to leverage Obama's dismissal of a jobs-creating project during campaign season.

    As if on cue, Speaker of the House John Boehner issued a statement yesterday condemning the White House's decision to block the project, citing the "tens of thousands of jobs" that Keystone XL would have created. "The president," said Boehner, "is selling out American jobs for politics." This is particularly interesting, considering the stance that Republicans in Congress have taken against the president's jobs bill since it was proposed back in September.

    The American Jobs Act, if passed in full, would have made hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investments in public projects, employing as many as 1.9 million Americans as they upgraded, repaired, and expanded highways, bridges, rail, and other crucial infrastructure across the country. It also included billions of dollars in provisions to keep teachers, firefighters, and police officers at work, as well as billions more for youth summer employment programs and an extension of unemployment benefits.

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    The rhetoric that came out of the right at that time included accusations that what the president was proposing was an irresponsibly massive expenditure, dismissing the act as an unnecessary addition to the deficit and an attempt at garnering electoral support ahead of the 2012 election. This was despite the president's assertion that it would be paid for by the supposed reductions from the ill-fated super committee.

    The prolonged debate on jobs creation and Keystone XL can be distilled to two points of agreement between both parties. First, everyone agrees that infrastructure investment in times of economic downturn leads to returns in the private sector. The point of divergence here is that Republicans believe in backing direct private investment, while the president stands firmly behind the importance of public seed money for spurring private investment. Second, the goal of any economic policy today is to create and sustain as many American jobs as possible.

    While Republicans may disagree with the means to arrive at more jobs for Americans, it is difficult to argue with the numbers. The most optimistic estimate had the Keystone XL pipeline creating 13,000 construction jobs and 118,000 spin-off jobs -- jobs that would come as a result of increased activity in local economies along the pipeline. This, of course, does not account for the potentially devastating economic effects of situating a tar sands pipeline within close proximity to some of the most thriving biodiversity hotspots in the United States. On the other hand, the American Jobs Act could have created about 1.9 million American jobs with virtually no impact on the environment.

    If Republicans in Congress are going to back an investment in infrastructure, it would be most beneficial to support the kinds of national public projects that will put millions of Americans back to work and will enhance the country's infrastructure. By throwing their weight behind the pipeline project, Republicans have missed a crucial opportunity for economic growth. Once again, politicization of a simple economic principle -- that infrastructure investments lead to jobs creation -- has left millions of Americans without a paycheck. Still, now that the Keystone XL pipeline has been canceled, Republicans should back the job-creating infrastructure projects proposed by the president if they are serious about getting Americans back to work.

    David Weinberger is the Senior Fellow for Energy and Environment at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a senior at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

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  • Millennial Pulse

    How Occupy Wall Street Can Help Revitalize Environmental Justice

    Nov 16, 2011David Weinberger

    earth-150By sparking a national dialogue about inequality, Occupy Wall Street is highlighting the link between economic and environmental justice.

    earth-150By sparking a national dialogue about inequality, Occupy Wall Street is highlighting the link between economic and environmental justice.

    It would seem that progressives have finally found in the Occupy movement the kind of populist momentum for which they have long hungered. Health Care for America Now, Green for All, MoveOn.org, and a number of unions have come out in support of Occupy Wall Street, fashioning different narratives that would tie their organizations' various missions to the values espoused by the protesters.

    No sector of the progressive movement has yearned for this change more than the environmental movement, whose claims to populist underpinnings have long been met with skepticism. The arrival of populism on the left and the attention that is now being paid to institutionalized inequality align well with the heightened priority that environmentalists in and out of Washington are now placing on environmental justice issues.

    Environmental justice is premised on a simple notion: that everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic background, is entitled to a healthy environment. In the United States, the majority of hazardous waste sites, power plants, and truck depots are sited in low-income neighborhoods, where the land is cheap and the communities' political capital is weak. As a result, these communities are subject to heightened frequencies of chronic illnesses, including asthma and obesity, that most often preclude long-term economic mobility. Environmentalists, seeing these historical inequities that have come with traditional, market-based patterns of infrastructure distribution, advocate for land-use solutions that account for externalities in the host communities and ensure equality of opportunity across class lines.

    Though there is still much more to be done, the environmental justice movement has made strides. Environmental justice assessments, through which the federal government evaluates particular policies' impacts on equal access to clean air, clean water, and green space, are now commonplace. At the same time, there is a growing understanding that access to ecological services and natural resources is directly related to the populist notions of economic mobility and opportunity.

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    Despite this progress, neither the 112th Congress nor the Obama administration has given environmentalists many victories. Election promises of a climate bill and renewed focus on alternative energy have gone unfulfilled. The State Department's decision on the Keystone XL tar sands oil project was delayed, but plans to reroute the pipeline are imminent. Yet with the world's attention turned to Zuccotti Park and the hundreds of tent cities across the country, environmentalists are now perfectly poised to have their agenda items thrust onto the map.

    Occupy Wall Street presents a perfect opportunity for proponents of environmental justice. In fact, the General Assembly at Occupy Wall Street held a Climate Justice Day last Sunday to explore opportunities for injecting environmental justice concerns into the policy conversations taking place in Zuccotti Park every day. The event, titled "Capitalism and the Roots of the Ecological Crisis," was one of many interest-specific conversations, including a number of series on financial reform and access to health care.

    Occupy Wall Street protesters come from a variety of backgrounds and carry a number of different "pet" interests. Environmental justice is simply one of the concerns on the minds of the protesters. Yet the overarching concerns of Occupy Wall Street -- economic inequality, exploitation of the masses, and economic immobility -- are epitomized by the environmental justice movement. As such, the environmental community should do everything in its power to ensure that environmental justice remains a significant part of the protesters' agenda.

    The legacy of Occupy Wall Street, more than a list of concrete policy demands, will likely be a shift in decision-making paradigms of governments and businesses. It was just this summer that national political discourse centered on deficits and the risk of government default. In the two months since protesters took Zuccotti Park, policymakers at all levels and in both parties have been forced to confront the frustrations of the 99%. Civic dialogue is being altered and the battle for economic opportunity is taking center stage. It is now up to environmentalists to seize on this new populist momentum and finally give environmental justice the attention it deserves.

    David Weinberger is the Senior Fellow for Energy and Environment at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a senior at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

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  • Millennial Pulse

    The Hidden Costs and Blatant Danger of Keystone XL

    Sep 29, 2011David Weinberger

    oil-rig-150TransCanada's tar sands oil pipeline poses a threat not just to the health and reliability of local ecosystems, but to investment and productivity in rural America.

    oil-rig-150TransCanada's tar sands oil pipeline poses a threat not just to the health and reliability of local ecosystems, but to investment and productivity in rural America.

    On September 12, hundreds of low-income residents in Nairobi spotted a leak in the pipeline that runs adjacent to their slum. Hoping that they might be able to cash in, many began to pack close to the pipeline to collect the spewing gasoline. A stray spark ignited the fuel and generated an inferno strong enough to kill over 75 people and injure many more. Homes were destroyed, families were torn apart, and livelihoods were decimated. This tragedy is an illustration of the risks associated with long-distance fossil fuel transport.

    Of course, this is an extreme example. Regulatory oversight and accountability are not exactly the same in developing countries in Kenya as they are in the United States. Still, there is a high degree of risk and exploitation in fuel transport programs here at home. Earlier this year, for instance, a pipeline owned by Exxon Mobil sprung a leak, sending 42,000 gallons of crude oil directly into the Yellowstone River. (Incidentally, Exxon is reporting that it will resume operations along the Yellowstone.)

    If scenarios like these seem isolated or unimaginable in your backyard, think again. TransCanada’s Keystone XL project is a risky $13 billion capital investment program that will connect crude, tar sands-derived oil from Canada to the American energy market. By bringing oil from tar sands in Alberta to refineries in Texas and Oklahoma, the pipeline poses a direct threat to the many ecosystems and communities that it will traverse.

    There is no doubt that the oil sands extraction, delivery, and processing mechanisms are extraordinarily injurious to the environment and to public health. High-profile protests have sprung up across the U.S. and Canada to fight the project’s execution, which environmentalists like Bill McKibben claim would pose a threat to potable water supply, Canadian boreal forests, and global climate.

    TransCanada, which has recorded liabilities of approximately $84 million for remediation obligations and compliance costs associated with environmental regulations, estimates that its pipeline could reasonably leak 11 times within its first 50 years in existence. Others argue that this number is very conservative, especially given the existing infrastructure’s track record, and that a more honest estimate would be to say that the new stretch could leak more than 50 barrels close to 91 times within 50 years. But as TransCanada rightly admits on its website, “it is not possible for the Company to estimate the amount and timing of all future expenditures related to environmental matters.” With such immeasurable environmental and economic externalities to consider, risk assessment is more of a defensive posture than a display of corporate ethics.

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    Risk to an ecosystem is not a factor for which advance remedial funds are sufficient. Instead, given that the economy of a locality is so deeply rooted in its ecology, environmental risk should be integrated with economic risk in upfront cost-benefit analysis. A program’s potential effect on ecosystem services, such as potable water supply, waste detoxification, crop pollination, disease control, game and seafood supply, and carbon sequestration and climate regulation should be internalized in calculating its lifetime cost.

    After the oil spill in the Yellowstone, ranchers in the region reported a loss in biodiversity, a decrease in productivity, significant damage to their land, and contamination of their water supplies that will no doubt affect output. These long-term effects on land, a crucial factor of production for local farmers, must be considered when planning for risk.

    Indeed, the EPA expects that several hundreds of acres of wetlands will be affected by the new stretch of pipeline, which will carry 830,000 barrels of oil from tar sands each day. A leak would also threaten water quality in the Missouri River, which provides for more than half of all Missourians’ drinking water, as well as services related to “recreation, power generation, water supply, river commerce, and fish and wildlife.”

    Water quality is in fact key to a number of ecosystem services, and with potable water supplies at heightened risk with the new project, local economies in these areas could suffer exorbitantly in the event of a leak. Moreover, a leak that affects water supply in otherwise productive rural regions of the country could prove disastrous to the entire country’s economy, which depends in part on agricultural markets.

    Beyond the environmental risks, theres is investor uncertainty. Development in the states that will be cut by the pipeline is already scarce. Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska contain extreme pockets of rural poverty, the conditions of which will likely be worsened with the introduction of a volatile fuel pipeline. According to the EPA, Keystone XL will put low-income, tribal, and minority communities at particular risk. With the threat of a spill looming over these areas, one can be sure that any business will need a hefty incentive to build or grow there.

    Still, these externalities have only begun to be internalized. Much of the cost to communities along the pipeline will be paid in uncertainty, not only for the ecosystems at risk, but for the prospect of development surrounding the pipelines. If TransCanada and the Canadian and U.S. governments viewed environmental costs as part of a larger picture--one that accounts for the relationship between ecosystem services’ reliability and private sector confidence in the surrounding region--there is no doubt that the company would have had a great deal more trouble proving that Keystone XL would be in the economic interest of the United States.

    David Weinberger is the Senior Fellow for Energy and Environment at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a senior at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

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  • Millennial Pulse

    Funding Cities’ Efforts to Beat Back the Tide of Climate Change

    Sep 16, 2011David Weinberger

    earth-150While some have started preparing for rising sea levels, it will take a global effort to pay for adaptation.

    earth-150While some have started preparing for rising sea levels, it will take a global effort to pay for adaptation.

    City policymakers constitute the frontline in cities' battles to secure funding from their parent states. But as the world experiences the largest urbanization trend in human history -- the UN projects that by 2050, 70 percent of the global population will live in cities -- issues of public health, energy independence, food production, security, and poverty alleviation will increasingly have to be dealt with at the city level. This growing burden on city policymakers is only exacerbated by the urgency of the effects of global climate change. Cities will also be on the frontlines of dealing with climate change, an expensive undertaking that will require resources beyond local budgets. The global community will need to chip in to their battles against rising tides.

    Commercial city centers have historically been located along bodies of water. Trade, transport, food systems, and public health are all sustained by a city's water supply and access to ports. There is no doubt that rising sea levels will have a disproportionate impact on these cities, virtually all of which lack adequate infrastructure to account for the kind of catastrophic flooding that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects (assuming minimal policy intermediation).

    In that event, potable water reserves could potentially be flooded and contaminated, essentially cutting off the city's supply of safe drinking water. Moreover, sea level rise in a city that employs a combined sewer overflow model will be all the more catastrophic to water quality. Surrounding bodies of water will be instantly and severely contaminated, as wastewater treatment plants fail to keep their "heads above water," so to speak.

    These familiar doomsday scenarios, while terrifying, can be prevented. "Climate change adaptation" is a phrase thrown around a great deal in development and smart growth circles. According to the IPCC, adaptation amounts to an "adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities". Cities around the world are working to adapt to the coming rise, acting quickly to secure their low-lying coastal settlements, protect their drinking water from the threat of encroaching saltwater, and rework their wastewater management systems to allow greater and speedier treatment capacity. From New York City to Ho Chi Minh City, from Miami to Durban, cities recognize the urgency and immediacy of the threat that rising sea levels pose and are in a mad rush to secure funds to prepare.

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    Still, as the cities of the world start to hit the ground running, their parent states struggle to reach consensus in climate talks. Recent UN Climate Change Conventions in Copenhagen and Cancun have given way to very little added momentum among member states, even as the stakes continue to grow. With the U.S. far from reaching domestic consensus on whether to formally commit to combating and adapting to climate change, prospects for these talks remain grim.

    But there is hope. In June of next year, nations of the world will gather in Rio de Janeiro as a part of the so-called "Rio+20"   UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD). Included among the agreed-upon themes of the convention is a commitment to building an "institutional framework for sustainable development" on a global scale.

    For any UNCSD institutional framework to successfully engage in climate change adaptation at a global scale, it must employ the financial and diplomatic resources of the UN to support and share the progress already being made by cities. The existing UN Adaptation Fund is targeted specifically at developing countries that are parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The Adaptation Fund employs a traditional grantor-grantee flow of funds, without regard to the utility of best practice sharing and open dialogue between city policymakers and planners, who will shoulder most of the burden of the adaptation crisis.

    At the same time, the diplomatic architecture of the UNCSD, with its hefty funding contributions and wide array of state representation, positions it very well to establish mechanisms to support urban climate change adaptation programs around the world.

    A centralized host of "urban diplomacy," this adaptation facility would inject funds into mentor city partnerships, coordinate city-to-city direct aid, and help to attract private foreign direct investment in adaptation programs. By sparking and maintaining an ongoing dialogue between cities and facilitating investment in adaptation projects, the UNCSD can have a profound impact on the number of cities in both the developing and developed world that are well prepared for the effects of climate change.

    Adapting to the coming tide is a herculean feat, and cities will require access to the full resources of their parent states in executing these projects. One can only hope that states will put their money where their people are.

    David Weinberger is the Senior Fellow for Energy and Environment at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a senior at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

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