One Sexy Soccer Mom and Her Sexy Solar Panels

Yesterday, I got to go to the Petroleum Club for lunch with my husband. Believe me--this is not a place we have ever been. Well, Bob has been there once on a lunch and learn, but I have not even been there for a wedding. Anyways, I got to feel like a grown up and have a lunch that did not consist of grilled cheese sandwiches and Annie's mac and cheese. That said--the lunch was neither vegetarian(and the option was slow and uninteresting) nor was any part of it organic. I know this not because I asked(I had already made my peace with the fact that this was to be my meat for the next couple of weeks), but because the woman sitting next to me asked. A note to organizers of events like this...it might be a good idea to serve organic, local fare. Ok...enough said.

So, Tim Flannery was the speaker. He is the author of a book called "The Weather Makers" which I have not read, but Bob has. I guess it is a very authoritative book on the science behind global warming. And, from the bits and pieces that Bob has read to me, it is pretty doom and gloom because, well, to put it bluntly, the science behind global warming is not very uplifting. So, as a lunch date, it was not very romantic, but it was exciting as we did get to introduce ourselves and have Tim sign our book. We are, of course, now on a first name basis with him and I am sure that he will be calling us for our opinions on important matters(for those who don't know me, I have been known to be a tad bit sarcastic). Anyhoo...I found the lunch interesting to say the least. In part because of what he had to say, but also because of the crowd that he was speaking to. You can imagine that the Petroleum Club is not usually the place for hard core environmentalists to gather. It was, in fact, a lunch put on by the Richard Ivey School of Business Alumni--so there were economists there from Price Waterhouse, TD Bank and RBC. Of course, the oil and gas sector was also well represented. At our table of 6, 3 were in oil and gas, 1 in university, 1 employee of Clean Calgary, and 1 soccer mom. There were some eyes rolling when it was announced that Alberta would be the first province to place caps on emissions...rolling for two very different reasons I'm sure--environmentalists see intensity based caps as one giant joke and industry sees caps of any sort as an altogether different sort of joke. For Bob and I, the announcement was interesting based on the fact that Harper and Stelmach had announced over $150 million towards sequestering carbon just the day before--which we see as a giant joke because oil and gas companies need no more government incentives they need serious caps to provide the incentive to spend their billions of dollars on clean alternatives...did I say earlier that I wasn't going to get political on this site--well, I apologize. So...with all of that out of the way, what was talked about by this man named Australian of the year?

Well, where to start? He started by explaining how small the atmosphere really is. He called it similar to an ocean but 500x's smaller. That is why we have yet to have a catastrophic ocean failure, but are having a catastrophic atmospheric one--not because we don't pollute our oceans, but because they are that much larger than the atmosphere. He also talked about how we solved the problems of acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer. He recounted the Montreal Protocol from 1987 which banned the manufacture of CFC's in developed nations. And how DuPont(the major manufacturer of said substances) kicked and screamed that it would be so incredibly damaging to their bottom line. And, he said that they had a good reason to kick and scream. That back in 1987, the science was not all that great, but, in the end, they relented because they were a family run business that did not want to be seen as responsible for such monumental damage to our planet. Guess what happened next? Forced to come up with an alternative, DuPont created cheaper and more ozone friendly alternatives...they actually made money! Wow...do you mean to say that money might actually be made by coming up with alternative(can you sense my sarcasm)? Interesting...

He also talked about how most people see the year 2100(the year widely agreed upon as when all the affects will be seen by) as so far away. Most people don't think it will actually affect them in their lifetime. He disagreed. He cited the current drought in Australia as evidence that climate change is already proving to be catastrophic. What really struck me about this argument was that he said that the drought was the result of a 10% decrease in annual rainfall--10% does not seem like a large difference, but for parts of his native country it has been nearly devastating. What he then did interested me a lot...being that I am concerned primarily about the social implications brought about by global warming. He talked about a recent trip to Kenya. He said that they are experiencing a similar drought, but that they are not part of the 1/5th of us able to cope with such a devastating change in climate. And, so, long ago their cattle died, their income disappeared and people are now starving to death. I think it is extremely important to note that while we may be very flexible in dealing with situations like these, developing countries will not be and, in the future, that could lead to extreme social instability around the world...leading to extreme issues of security for nations of wealth.

So, the other major thing he talked about before addressing our local issues(the tar sands) was the rate at which the arctic ice cap is melting. In 2005, when he finished writing his book, things in the arctic had been pretty stable for awhile and one would have estimated that the ice would be gone by about 2100. He said that the summer of that year was the first time we saw a huge difference in data and that it went unmentioned in his book because climate is an ever changing species that fluctuates and this could have been an isolated episode. What he went on to tell us was shocking. Melt that summer was huge...giant chunks of ice disappeared at a rate never seen before. The following winter was just as devastating as ice formations slowed as well. What was even more alarming is that it has continued at an increased rate. Now, most experts would place the disappearing of the arctic ice shelf at around 2040--a full 60 years earlier!!! And, that if you are totally unscientific about it, you could just draw a line on the graph straight through the last few years and place it somewhere between 2010 and 2020. Many species depend on that ice--including polar bears, walruses, seals...and the people of our north.

Of course, in the round of questions that followed his talk, the issue of the tar sands of Alberta came up. He got a little bit nervous and even mentioned that it is a difficult thing to talk about in a place with such an enormous natural asset. He went on to talk about his concerns over Australia coal--Australia being one of the world's largest exporters of coal. Change is inevitable. We can all hope to keep things going our way, but in reality, sometimes change is thrust upon us. With a large natural asset and billions of dollars of infrastructure in place already and scheduled to come into place to support technologies that will soon be obsolete, he said that his worry would be that in the future we will be forced to abandon these assets. Smart investors and smart businesses would move fast to be the first to come up with alternatives to avoid that possibility instead of spending more and more money on trying to sustain it.

One question was about how to make things like solar panels and hybrid vehicles more sexy so that soccer moms would want them as soccer moms make most of the major money decisions in households. It was said that solar panels are not that sexy. What?! Has Bob fooled me? I think they are totally sexy(especially now that all the trim is up). I said to those around me that I am a sexy soccer mom with sexy solar panels(well, ok, I didn't call myself sexy, but I totally am). In closing a quote was read from his book about how you can personally change your carbon footprint by 70%.

"The best evidence indicates that we need to reduce our CO2 emissions by 70 per cent by 2050. If you own a four-wheel-drive and replace it with a hybrid fuel car, you can achieve a cut of that magnitude in a day rather than the half a century. If your electricity provider offers a green option, for the cost of a daily cup of coffee you will be able to make equally major cuts to your household emissions. And, if you vote for a politician who has a deep commitment to reducing CO2 emissions, you might change the world."

I know that my little recap was not as eloquent as the actual talk itself, but I wanted to take the time to provide those of you who actually read my blog with some food for thought. Maybe these ideas are new to you...maybe not, but dialogue is important. And, like I said to the woman who made the soccer mom quote--soccer moms are deeply concerned. They are concerned because they have good reason to be concerned. They are raising our future leaders.