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Some analysts liken the technological advancements in clean energy to an Industrial Revolution. It is hard to argue when fascinating research is under way. Here are just a few things that caught my eye in recent weeks:
1/ Cool research by CoolPlanet Biofuels of Camarillo, CA., into the possible conversion of raw biomass such as algae and crop waste into high-grade fuel. Read more at this Green Car Congress post;
2/Continued studies into wave power, such as this Australian project that would produce both energy and fresh water;
3/University of Notre Dame research into solar paint that could transform homes into electricity generators. Current designs aren't very efficient, but the paint is inexpensive to make in large quantities. Who knows where this leads, but it is fascinating. More here.;
4/ The lessons learned from this showcase village in Germany that produces more energy than it consumes;
5/ Possible construction of an entire town in New Mexico devoted to test sustainability concepts;
6/ Continued efforts to increase efficiency and reduce costs of solar power so that it reaches grid parity. More on that here and here;
Year-end forecasts are a common staple at newspapers. I don't think there was one year in my three decades as a reporter that I wasn't involved in a story that either looked at the current year in the rear view or predicted what was to come.
So, I continue in that vein, except this time I have help from Michael Kanellos of GreenBiz.com. Here are his top 10 predictions for 2012. I don't think he is too far off, especially when it comes to No. 2 (jobs in renewable energy) and No. 5 (energy efficiency).
Sure, 2011 brought us the implosion of Solyndra, but it also ushered in the first stages of a solar boom in California. Try telling these 700 workers in Southern California's desert that renewable energy jobs are a myth.
And there are more to come. Dozens of solar projects are proposed for Central and Southern California, including where I sit in the farm-rich sun-kissed San Joaquin Valley. Many of the solar projects won't employ large numbers of people when they are operational, but construction workers ought to be kept busy for the next five years.
But I'm more excited about the prospects of a sincere advancement in energy-efficiency programs. Businesses, local governments and individuals are realizing that a modest investment in energy upgrades can yield impressive cost savings and a smaller carbon footprint. And those savings, unlike a tax refund or one-time windfall, continue after the initial payback. Want more evidence: check out this post, which contends "significant" savings occur.
Those savings can be reinvested into business operations, stimulate the economy or go into additional energy-saving programs that cut power bills even more. Efficiency really is the gift that keeps on giving - at least for this scientist who slashed his monthly power bill from $400 to $50.
The Christian Science Monitor has another take on energy efficiency here.
Government mandates are sparking some of the interest in energy efficiency. California, adhering to the the old adage "you can't manage what you can't manage," now requires through AB 1103 that "benchmark" - energy use data - for commercial structures over 50,000 square feet in size be available by July 2012. Here's more.
Critics complain that it is just more government meddling, but benchmarking is already pretty common, with Seattle and other cities mandating it, and thousands of buildings across the U.S. already marked. Energy is a landlord's largest controllable cost, and many property owners who complete benchmarking can qualify for Energy Star certification, which studies show increase the value and sales price of property. It also is used in LEED certification.
Let's see: Higher property values. Lower energy bills. Smaller carbon footprint. What's not to like?
The drumbeat over whether green jobs really exist has been steady throughout 2011. Much of the debate stems from the definition of "green," but a front page story in the Riverside Press Enterprise on Christmas Day is worth noting.
The headline reads, "Solar Projects Bring Precious Jobs." Here's a link to the online version of the story.
The article by Leslie Berkman quotes a handful of formerly unemployed truckers, construction workers and others who are among some 700 people building the $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating site in the Mojave Desert - one of several large-scale solar projects under way or proposed in Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties.
"This is a godsend for a lot of people," said Tim West, a carpenter quoted by Berkman.
The plants will help California reach its 33 percent renewables mandate, but also provide badly needed jobs during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Construction jobs in the Inland Empire portion of California have fallen 57 percent since the height of the building boom, Berkman writes.
The solar construction boom is expected to last in that region for at least five years. Those plants won't require as many employees when they are operating, but at least people such as West and Lee Russell, a former trucker driver-turned-apprentice who now earns $24 per hour at the solar plant and who also was quoted in the Press Enterprise article, are working now.
The Mojave Desert isn't the only place in California where solar jobs are likely to soar. Dozens of solar projects are making their way through the planning process in San Luis Obispo, Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties as well, where planners are being cautious to avoid avoid conflicts with prime farm land. Read more here.
Meanwhile, the solar and wind industries are attracting some savvy investors, such as Warren Buffett, Google and KKR & Co.. They are investing in select projects in California and elsewhere. Buffett, who also has interests in oil companies, invested in two solar projects that have power purchase agreements in place, noted The Motley Fool.
Critics contend solar energy is too expensive and can't last without subsidies, but installation costs are falling (43 percent decline since 1998, according to this study by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab), panels are becoming more efficient and it won't be long before solar electricity reaches grid parity. In fact, some experts say it's already there. Check out this recent blog post by my colleague, Mike Nemeth.
Solar energy isn't the only green industry headed for prime time. Corporate America has discovered that going green adds more green to its bottom line. Major companies are beefing up their sustainability departments (dubbed "green teams) and are seeking out ways to cut energy consumption. And let's not forget energy benchmarking, which is gaining a higher profile, especially in California where a law requires data before certain property can be sold.
Sure, green companies will come and go. There will be some high-profile implosions like Solyndra, and others will just kind of slip away into the night. Big companies will acquire smaller ones and consolidations will occur. Startups will carve out a niche, and established businesses will expand to take advantage of green opportunities.
This is a young dynamic industry - and it's on the move.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued limits on the amount of mercury and other toxics substances pouring from the stacks of mostly coal-fired power plants.
Dubbed the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, they're the first national regulations to be put in place and were vigorously opposed by the coal industry. The standards are meant to protect people from mercury, arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium and cyanide, the EPA says.
Officials say the "standards will slash emissions of these dangerous pollutants by relying on widely available, proven pollution controls that are already in use at more than half of the nation’s coal-fired power plants."
However, they didn't list specifics. The standards enacted match those proposed.
Big mercury reduction
The nation's 491 coal-fired plants contribute an estimated 48 tons of mercury into the air each year. A report by Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management says the most stringent standards for reducing mercury emissions would remove 96 percent from the stacks of coal-fired power plants while the least would remove only 40 percent. The report's authors say it's a difference of 2 and 28 tons.
EPA estimates that the new safeguards will prevent as many as 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks a year. The standards will also prevent 130,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms and about 6,300 fewer cases of acute bronchitis among children each year, officials say.
"These standards represent a major victory for clean air and public health," says EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. The "health benefits ... far outweigh the costs of compliance."
Compliance costly
Some coal-fired power plants already have been retrofit with toxic emissions controls that would meet the most stringent reductions, but for others it would be a problem. For instance, biggovernment.com says: "In some cases, these companies simply can’t afford to buy the equipment and for others the needed equipment isn’t commercially available. If this rule is implemented, it would force the shut down of many coal-fired power plants."
According to a Government Accountability Office report from October 2009, some 14 plants with sorbent injection systems installed have complied, "enabling them to meet state or other mercury emission requirements -- generally 80 percent to 90 percent reductions."
The GAO also found that the 14 plants spent an average of $3.6 million on the systems -- "a fraction of the cost of other pollution control devices." The pollution-control systems inject sorbents -- powdery substances to which mercury binds -- into the exhaust from boilers to achieve the reductions, the GAO says. And it says annual cost of buying sorbents is about $675,000, still a modest sum compared to the potential cost to human health down the road.
Long time coming
The regulations are 20 in the making. Congress passed the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and mandated that EPA require control of toxic air pollutants including mercury.
More than half of all coal-fired power plants already use pollution control technologies. EPA officials say that once final, these standards "will level the playing field by ensuring the remaining plants – about 40 percent of all coal fired power plants - take similar steps to decrease dangerous pollutants.
What others are saying
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg: "Today, the President has done the right thing by ignoring the false claims of a narrow special interest and siding with the public health and the public good."
Shannon Baker-Branstetter, Consumers Union: Regulating mercury emissions is just a common sense way to protect consumers."
President and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity Steve Miller: "The EPA is out of touch with the hard reality facing American families and businesses. This latest rule will destroy jobs, raise the cost of energy and could even make electricity less reliable."
American corporate culture has stumbled upon energy efficiency and sustainability -- a lot like Bugs Bunny and Daffy did in the "Abominable Snow Rabbit."
In the classic cartoon, the Looney Tunes heroes are bound for Palm Springs but take a wrong turn. As Daffy says, "I told you we should have turned west at East St. Louis!"
Likewise, corporations on their endless search for savings and cost reductions have found a more people friendly method than simply cutting jobs. And they're finding sustainability not only lucrative but image enhancing.
Wall Street goes green
Recent green-minded announcements by iconic brands McDonalds and PepsiCo and many other lesser known but equally significant companies illustrate the trend. Yet they stand in stark contrast to the cold shoulder offered the topic by self-described business friendly GOP leaders.
PepsiCo's Frito-Lay North America division announces it will roll out eight new electric trucks in the Boston area, while McDonald's says customers (64 million per day) will see greener changes in the year ahead.
Statements like these provide insight to a movement gaining quiet but steady momentum with each fiscal quarter.
"We have set a goal of becoming the most fuel efficient fleet in the country," says Mike O'Connell, Frito-Lay's senior director of fleet, in prepared remarks. His company's fleet, he says, is the nation's seventh largest privately owned.
And Bob Langert, McDonald's vice president for sustainability, tells Marc Gunther of Greenbiz.com: "We're on a path to mainstream sustainability. This is transformational for us. We want to be bolder, and we want to make a bigger impact."
Renewables in stealth mode
Less visible companies are also making moves into the green zone. For instance, London-based Greycon Ltd., which provides optimization software worldwide, is offering limited free consulting services to its customers that have solar systems. The idea, officials say, is to "support manufacturers that are progressively driving sustainability efforts within their industry."
In a 2007 study, Shelly Fust and Lisa Walker of Los Angeles-based management consultant Korn/Ferry International say companies began to embrace sustainability to gain competitive advantage. They liken the payoff to the total quality management approach that has served companies like Toyota and Motorola so well, acceleration problems aside. "Companies that embrace a high-quality, holistic approach to corporate sustainability are more likely to address short-term needs while positioning themselves for long-term success," Fust and Walker write.
So, while it appears many politicians ignore or refute climate change, their corporate base of support may be headed in a different direction.
The electorate goes green
And if this California survey is any indication, the rank and file may not be too far behind. Commissioned by the California League of Conservation Voters, the survey finds that 63 percent of independent voters believe in climate change and see it as a major problem that needs to be addressed, according to KQED's Climate Watch blog.
As McDonald's CEO Jim Skinner says: "We will continue to use our size, scope and influence to make a positive difference for children, families and communities around the world."
Some believe talking about global warming is the problem. A petition opposing cap and trade of carbon dioxide emissions championed by GlobalClimateScam.com has generated 183,999 letters and emails sent to Congress, the site says.
Apparent fraud?
The petition in part says: "I do hereby petition Congress to immediately cease all climate change legislation and instead conduct a formal investigation into the apparent fraud that has been perpetrated upon the American people."
I prefer the Abomidable Snowman's take. In the 1961 episode, he grabs Daffy, squeezes him and says he wants to name him George. Eventually, Bugs and Daffy befriend Abomidable and convince him to head to Palm Springs with them, where he melts.
If GlobalClimateScam.com is wrong and we are headed for massive environmental change due to global warming, the snowman wouldn't be safe in the Himalayas either.
As legislators squabble over whether to extend a payroll tax cut that affects millions of middle income households, nary a word is uttered over another way to financially benefit those same families.
Slashing energy bills.
President Obama's $4 billion retrofit plan helps, but more is needed. Families that earn $32,500 to $72,500 per year account for about one-third of total energy use in the United States, but rallying those households to take steps to cut that consumption - and thus their bills - is tough. It is difficult, in part, because those improvements have to be paid for, and families have other financial priorities.
"It's really difficult to motivate them to invest in improving the efficiency of their homes, and to overcome the up-front cost barrier once they are motivated," said Mark Zimring, a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which has identified ways to deliver savings on those same utility bills.
Buildings make up 70 percent of all energy use and 40 percent of all carbon emissions, so reducing power consumption eases demand on the power grid and benefits the environment, as well as the pocketbook. In fact, the savings may be greater than some estimates. Some ambitious retrofits are achieving energy savings of up to 80 percent. What a cost reduction that would achieve! Read more here.
An energy audit of my 1,400 square-foot house near Fresno, CA., led to a low estimate of $1,700 (after rebates) worth of retrofits that would shave $50 per month off my bill. The Berkeley researchers note that $5,000 is a more common starting point in more comprehensive home-energy upgrades, and that is too much for many people to rationalize in this economy.
"...Higher income households are simply better positioned financially to take advantage of these programs," researcher Merrian Borgeson said. "Persuading middle-income households to undertake these whole-home improvements has proven challenging, and with declines in median income and home equity - coupled with rising energy costs - that challenge has become more acute."
So, what to do? The folks at the Berkeley lab have some ideas for utilities, governments and other agencies that promote efficiency:
Solve a problem that households recognize. Messaging matters, so frame energy efficiency as an investment in the home, as an opportunity to replace aging equipment or to address safety issues;
Offer options, from low-cost ones that seal leaks, add insulation and repairs ducts to more expensive replacement of air conditioners, furnaces and others;
Middle-income families need programs that pay for themselves. Consider tiered packages and financial incentives based on income;
Offer innovative financing methods, such as loan repayments tied to utility bills, property tax and paychecks;
Leverage other public programs and funding, such as neighborhood revitalization, housing rehab and others;
Governments can adopt energy labeling, and make energy efficiency more visible and valuable in the home real estate market.
Energy efficiency has been called the "low-hanging fruit" of the clean-energy movement because a relatively minimal investment can reap huge rewards. Paybacks are often quick - often only a few years - and the savings don't stop when costs are recouped. I estimated that my savings would equate to an investment that yields a 9 percent return, while a scientist cited in this blog post reduced his monthly power bill from $400 to $50.
The city of Fresno crunched utility data and determined that a 30 percent across-the-board reduction in energy use would pump $260 million into the local economy. (More in this blog post.)
That's just one city. Imagine the financial boost if that was nationwide.
For the past couple of years, I've been imagining this scenario: What if an oil company ventured big time into solar, wind, biofuels, hydrogen and wave energy?
Imagine the public goodwill such a move would engender. It also offers strategic investment diversity. Communications teams could play up the green angle, talk up the environmental benefits and start referring to their employer as a full-spectrum energy company.
The ex-journalists in the press office could start firing off straight-forward missives. Something like: "We support clean energy but realize we must pursue a balanced approach. Oil will be with us for generations, but we must use it wisely, taking advantage of energy efficiency and renewables whenever possible."
Is it far-fetched? Certainly. But who better? BP had 2011 third quarter earnings of $5.33 billion, a decline of 3.7 percent from the previous year. Royal Dutch Shell earned $7 billion in the same period, double from a year earlier. And Chevron topped them both with $7.8 billion, more than double from a year earlier.
A Chevron allocation of half its earnings to solar and wind would rock Wall Street.
Oil for renewables
Clean energy won't happen by itself. Like many of the up-and-coming energy sources that came before, it needs favorable government policy, investment and dedicated research and development.
The oil industry can relate. Heck, listen to any politician talk about curtailing regulation and opening up opportunity for exploratory drilling or shale oil extraction. "Everybody needs a little help," or so says the grime-encrusted sign the homeless guy holds up near the mall.
The oil industry could easily reframe the good science/bad science debate regarding climate change now raging in political circles. Major investment into solar like the deal by Google and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts to buy four photovoltaic power plants near Sacramento from Recurrent Energy could make a substantive dent.
It's unlikely. Probably too risky. Oil industry types like to stick to a business model with a certain payoff.
Soviet-era parable
Big Oil's unwillingness to bend reminds me of a parable I heard in the former Soviet Union a couple years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In June 1991 while working for the now-defunct Anchorage Times, photographer Doug Van Reeth and I hire an older woman in Khabarovsk, Russia as a translator. Our editor wanted a story on entrepreneurs to reflect the region's emergence from decades under the repressive centrally controlled regime.
Our translator, who I'll call Olga and was one of the very few in her once-closed city to speak English, explains that yes, indeed, her city did have some entrepreneurs but they would be difficult to find.
We ask why. Olga sighs and looks at Doug and I like we are a little slow.
"This is Russia," she says. "For years, everybody earned the same salary. Nothing. A doctor was paid the same as a janitor. We all had small apartments. We stood in the same lines to get fresh meat."
Ugly American journalists
OK, Doug and I say, still not getting it. We have just two days to pull together interviews chronicling the new capitalists, and we feel a little desperate. Our Alaska Airlines flight is the first on a new international route, and my stories and Doug's photos would unveil to our state the once mysterious Cold War foe.
But we come up with nothing. We had just gone through a bustling open-air market, where people sold everything from pirated compact discs, electronics, produce and baked goods. Nobody would talk to us. One grizzled character even raised his arms and shouted what I believe were expletives at Olga while pointing in our direction. Even the shoppers gave us the evil eye after that.
We sit on a park bench nearby and Olga says, "This is a communist country. If one man has more than his neighbor, it is considered wrong."
Then Olga tells us this little story. I'm a little foggy on the details but here's the gist: A man works hard on a little garden he maintains in the country, earning enough to buy a goat. This goat produces milk that feeds his family, making his children strong. Food is rationed then and hard to come by. People stand in long lines for hours just to get a chunk of cheese or loaf of bread. He sells the extra milk to supplement his salary at the factory.
Soviet entrepreneur
The man lives in a tiny apartment but keeps the goat on his dacha, a postage stamp of land just outside the city. He must visit the goat in the morning and night. She soon gives him two kids. In a couple years, he has four goats and is making good money off milk and vegetables. His children are healthy, and his wife is happy.
However, his neighbors don't like his changing fortunes. They want what he has. But rather than starting their own gardens and getting their own goats, the solve it Soviet style.
They beat the guy up, burn his garden and kill his goats. "You're no better than we are," they say.
The parable is roughly the same as Nickolai Gogol's "The Overcoat," which I devoured as a grade-schooler. I mention this to Olga and she smiles and nods.
Sticking with the status quo
The neighbors in the story remind me of the oil industry. They're secure with the status quo and wary of change. Rather than encourage the pursuit of other sources of industry, they'd prefer to stick with the familiar.
That short-sightedness didn't do much for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. When President Reagan said, "Tear down that wall," he knew it was already full of cracks.
Lobbyists for the fossil-fuel industry aren't looking too far beyond the next election. That short-term view may hamstring Big Oil and Big Coal at some point, especially as the international cry for curbs on carbon dioxide production increases and weather patterns continue to change.
Cracks are forming in our fossil-fuel economy, too. Added costs of extraction for oil, natural gas and coal boost viability of renewable energy. And people generally are getting sick of polluted air and the illness it brings.
Rather than kill the goat, the oil industry could buy a flock of them and maybe convince its friends in Congress that favorable policy for his new green ventures would be beneficial economically and -- heaven forbid -- environmentally.
Two decades to clean air
In fact, a new study by Stanford professor Mark Z. Jacobson and University of California, Davis researcher Mark A. Delucchi says the world can be fully powered by alternative energy in 20 to 40 years with existing technology and at about the same cost as conventional energy.
"We're really looking at trying to power the entire world, eliminating the 2.5 million to 3 million air pollution deaths every year and all global warming," Jacobson says.
The researchers acknowledge it will be a massive undertaking, requiring "the societal and political will to make it happen."
Others also say it can be done. So let's tear down that wall between new and conventional energy sources.
Loren Steffy, a business columnist at the Houston Chronicle, puts it this way: "We need to actively conserve and boost energy efficiency, develop renewables and promote domestic production of conventional fuels." He says if the United States enacts policies to encourage that, we wouldn’t become energy independent, but "might prevent ourselves from being held hostage by rising prices and dwindling available supply."
Back in the USSR
Doug and I finally find our entrepreneurs the day before we were to leave. We meet them quietly and promise nobody in the city would learn their names. Olga introduces us to an attorney who sets up joint ventures. He meets us at his small apartment, introduces us to his wife and young son and talks with us for about an hour after making sure we are OK. He serves vodka flavored with some sort of super-hot pepper.
The attorney gives us the name of a "businessman," who we meet the next day. "Be careful," he says. Olga translates, frowning.
Our businessman turns out to be a great guy, personable and self-deprecating. I hit it off with him immediately. Olga declines our offer to translate. We find another who couldn't speak English as well. The businessman introduces us to artists, craftsmen, restaurateurs and small-time manufacturers. With his introduction, they treat us like long-lost relatives.
Doug shoots pictures. I collect interviews for a half dozen stories that would run for a week in the paper.
"An offer he can't refuse"
Our businessman then gives us an intricately carved piece of ivory about 18 inches long of a native man and sled dog team. We figure it is walrus tusk and respectfully decline. It was about then we deduce that our friend runs the rather large contingent of hookers at the Intourist Hotel and travels in a three-car caravan. His Mercedes stand out in a city where the other nice cars are shiny Ladas, a Russian staple based on an old Fiat platform.
We figure he's the Don Corleone of Khabarovsk. Twice his representatives bring the ivory back, trying in Russian to convince us to take it, the last time right after we clear customs and are about to board the plane.
We ask an ivory dealer in Anchorage the next week how much the piece would be worth. She says about $12,000.
Google, enticed in part by Sacramento Metropolitan Utility District (SMUD)'s new feed-in-tariff, just announced a big investment into solar power near California's capital. Here's more from the search engine's blog.
The $94 million infusion into Recurrent Energy's (Recurrent also has a big solar project planned near Fresno) four plants near Sacramento brings Google's renewable energy portfolio to nearly $1 billion. Here is more on its clean energy investments, but they include utility-scale solar, financing programs for residential rooftop solar, and wind power.
Google recently said it will stop internal solar research programs, but would continue to invest in individual projects.
Google's announcement follows one yesterday by a subsidiary of Warren Buffett's company, which announced a minority investment into a huge solar project in Arizona. That, in turn, followed his purchase of a large solar project just west of the San Joaquin Valley. More on those here.
It remains to be seen how solar power fares in 2012, especially if certain subsidies expire, but investors with deep pockets still continue to pursue it, especially in California where the state passed an ambitious 33 percent renewables mandate. The industry is emerging in fits and starts, but clearly some people think there is power in the sun.
First, Ernst & Young referred to clean technology as the next industrial revolution. Now, Seattle investment firm Cascadia Capital likens sustainable industries to the early years of the Internet, saying in a new report:
"The clean energy sector is going through the same re-birth process. . . We are seeing better companies, better technology, better business models and better executives in this industry every day. We strongly believe that a lot of the companies we see and work with will be well known companies in the 2013-2014 timeframe. Green companies are rising from the ashes."
This shows once again that the clean-energy industry isn't dying as many claim. It is emerging, staggering forward unevenly like a toddler growing up. The implosion of government guarantee-recipient Solyndra wasn't a failure as much as it was a sign of maturation. It couldn't compete and, in business as in nature, the weak are early casualties.
As former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said at current Gov. Jerry Brown's climate conference last week: "All kinds of businesses failed at the same time as Solyndra, but no one hears about that. You make mistakes and you fail. That is the way business is."
Cascadia notes, as we have many times, that investors, entrepreneurs and researchers have been joined by the big bucks of Corporate America. Companies such as Boeing and Walmart see profit in sustainability. You can bet these large corporations wouldn't be investing in it if they didn't expect rosy returns at the end.
They are saving millions from efficiency measures, such as lighting retrofits that really do pay off (How about $300,000 per year for Canon!). They are boosting their sustainability departments and are joining governments, professional sports and schools in pledging to use more renewable energy. (more here, here and here.)
One of the world's richest men just announced plans to buy into his second gigantic solar farm - this one in Arizona - to complement one in California, a state with the most ambitious renewables mandate in the nation, an equally ambitious cap-and-trade plan and a robust green chemistry program.
Companies are even joining forces with state governments to build new cities dedicated to testing clean energy. Check out this fascinating proposal out of New Mexico, where a whole new kind of company town is in the offing.
Clearly, the green movement is gaining, even if the GOP slate of presidential candidates ignores it. Tom Engelhardt in a TomDispatch.com post entitled, "Restless Planet" calls it the "Fifth Occupation," and claims its already bubbling to the surface, much as the methane is bubbling up from formerly frozen terrain. See this New York Times piece.
"When they stand their ground and chant 'We exist!' in anger, strength, and wonder, maybe then we can really tackle climate change and hope it isn’t too late," he writes. "Maybe the fifth occupation is the one we’re waiting for -- and don't for a second doubt that it will come. It’s already on its way. "
