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By Kirsty McHugh, OUP UK

In the last of this week’s Countdown to Copenhagen blog posts, Gordon Wilson of the Open University writes about public action and climate change beyond the COP15 summit. He is Senior lecturer in Technology & Development, and has been writing and researching on development issues for many years. These include technological capabilities, professional expertise and practice, knowledge production through active social learning, and science and technology for development. He has also written extensively on sustainable development. He is one of the editors of Environment, Development, and Sustainability: Perspectives and cases from around the world.

Click here for the rest of the Countdown to Copenhagen blogs.

World leaders at COP15 may or may not put their pens to a deal where it is worth waiting for the ink to dry. But to place too much reliance on anything that raises hopes is more than creating a hostage to fortune. It amounts to abrogating our responsibilities as citizens through setting up straw people who fall down when they fail to deliver.

The history of public policy and action has shown that they are rarely the sole acts of benign, neutral government drawing the right conclusions from technical analyses. More likely they represent a process of more-or-less ruly accommodations between many players and their different interests. Governments may be the most important of these players, but they are not the only ones. The history of public health initiatives in 19th century UK provides a useful lesson in this regard, the favourable social indicators of the Indian state of Kerala compared with the rest of India another. There is no reason to suppose that these lessons of how public needs come to be defined do not also apply to the international arena.

With respect to climate change, we owe a great debt to the scientists who created a consensus under the umbrella of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and who have ensured that the issue is on national and international agendas. We should not forget, however, the potential role of informed citizens operating individually or collectively in defining public policies and actions. This role is more than ‘green’ behaviour in terms of, for example, doing our bit to reduce carbon footprints. It is also more than our right in many countries to elect and de-elect our governments, important as that is. (In any case, at an international scale, a world government that is democratically accountable is not even on the radar.) Nor does it necessarily concern our ability to mount 10, or even 100, demonstrations relating to Copenhagen. It does concern, however, our abilities to apply individual and collective pressure through a combination of working with, and where necessary confronting, governments and their international manifestations, and demonstrating alternatives.

I stress the qualifying adjective ‘informed’ which I don’t restrict to citizen understanding of the science of climate change and its likely impacts, nor of the social science of understanding socio-economic impacts. Such understandings are undoubtedly necessary to be ‘informed’ but they are not sufficient. Knowing the ‘facts’ is neither enough to change personal lifestyles nor to change po

By Kirsty McHugh, OUP UK

Joe Smith is senior lecturer in environment in the social sciences faculty at The Open University and Co-Director of the Cambridge Media & Environment Programme which runs seminars on environmental change and development issues for senior media decision makers. Joe is initiator and chair of Interdependence Day a new communications and research project. He is also co-author (with Stephen Peake) of Climate Change: From Science to Sustainability, an interdisciplinary introduction that takes the reader from keystones of the underlying science – and not just the headlines – through to the philosophical and political consequences of climate change. In his Countdown to Copenhagen post, he talks about ‘truth’ and climate change in the light of the recent hacked emails at the University of East Anglia.

For the rest of the Countdown to Copenhagen posts, click here.

What to say about ‘truth’ and climate science in the context of what appears to be the theft of ten years worth of private emails between climate researchers by mischief-making hackers? I’m not going to comment further on the incident but it proves once again that there are some highly motivated people out there who want to tear up the narrative that climate change is human caused and requires urgent action. There are a small number of high profile media commentators who have savoured the opportunity to insist once again that climate change is a massive science fraud and big-state tax plot.

How should we investigate the notion that humans are changing the climate? Who is best equipped to advise on how to behave in an experiment that we may only get to run once? If I wanted to know about a very complex scientific problem I’d start looking for answers by running the biggest scientific peer review process in human history. The IPCC is exactly that. It was set up to do the best job possible in making sense of an enormously demanding intellectual question: does human activity influence the climate – in the past, present and future?

The dominant model of science is one of aggressive (individual or lab based) competition to get the most convincing arguments supported by publicly published evidence, and to break new ground with original and supportable arguments. As an outsider looking in I think that that can be an unproductive form of ‘knowledge generation’, but one thing for sure is that it isn’t designed to produce consensus around such a complex topic as climate change. The IPCC is a review process with only a very small secretariat, and the thousands of scientists who generate the work across many disciplines that make up the raw material of the review are all highly competitive. The IPCC reports should be all the more disturbing for the fact that they point to so much willingness to agree within the science community on the headline themes.

Why then does a substantial minority of the population feel more confidence in Lords Monckton or Lawson, or the Daily Mail’s Melanie Phillips? It is the intellectual equivalent of backing a Sunday pub team of vain injured veterans against Real Madrid’s best side. We’ve all got pretty good feeling for who has the better f

I know. I know. Sustainability is actually one of the big millennia buzz words, usually referring to important things like, saving our planet. Recycle. Reduce. Reuse. I get it.

But right now I'm really worried about sustaining my hair. It's all because of the gray. Gray changes everything. It makes your hair wiry. And changes the whole styling thing. It pretty much makes you reassess your haircut and ask if there isn't something that can be done because, basically, you don't want to look like your kids grandmother just yet (okay, ever!).

I've thought about dealing with the gray by going short (I have long hair).

But I had a bad experience with short. A few years ago, after I had my second child, I let my hairdresser convince me to get a bob. It would be easier than having long hair, he said. I gave in.

He did a great job. It really looked good. Amazing. Effortless.

Until I washed it.

And then all of those layers went every which way but down. Horror. What was I doing wrong? I suddenly remembered with a sinking feeling how my hairdresser had started to sweat as he dried my hair. How he'd labored at those layers. They weren't effortless at all.

Ack! How was I supposed to manage this?

I let it grow out.

Which was great until the grey started to appear. I mean, it's not exactly like it's going to go away now (despite my complaint with the gene pool. They so are not returning my phone calls).

So, color, right?

But there was that one study they did that one time that showed a correlation between coloring and bladder cancer.

I don't want vanity to give me bladder cancer.

Okay, green freak, go all gray. Easy enough. Yeesh.

But I don't want to look like Barbara Bush.

Then cut it all off!

But...um...isn't that one of those options that sounds a lot better than it looks?



Why don't men have these problems???

Daniel Sperling is a Professor of Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis and a Founding Director of US-Davis’s Institute of Transportation Studies. He and Deborah Gordon wrote Two Billion Cars: Driving Towards Sustainability which provides a concise history of America’s love affair with cars and an overview of the global oil and auto industries. Be sure to watch tonight when Daniel Sperling is interviewed on The Daily Show.

We decided it would be fun to ask Sperling some questions before and after his big television appearance. Below are the pre-show questions. Check back tomorrow to watch a clip and read the post-show interview.  Read other OUPblog posts about this book here.

OUPblog: Do you watch The Daily Show and have you ever fantasized about being a guest?

Daniel Sperling: Yes, I watch, but I never even fantasized about being a guest—even though all my friends and students now say I have reached the highest state of coolness; one (young) professor friend now says he idolizes me.

OUPblog: What advice have people given you about going on the show?

Sperling: Roll with the jokes, don’t even think about trying to be funny, be succinct, know your key messages, don’t wear white shirts or patterned jackets, have fun.

OUPblog: What is the one thing you would like people to take away from your interview?

Sperling: It’s time for all of us to engage in solving the oil and climate challenges and, to quote our president, yes we can.

Deborah Gordon is a senior transportation policy analyst who has worked with the National Commission on Energy Policy, the Chinese government and many other organizations. Daniel Sperling is Professor of Engineering and Environmental Science and Founding Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis. Gordon and Sperling are the authors of Two Billion Cars: Driving Towards Sustainability which provides a concise history of America’s Love affair with cars and an overview of the global oil and auto industries. A few weeks ago we posted an original article by these authors.  Today we have pulled an excerpt from the book which looks specifically at Governor Schwarzenegger.

The unlikely hero who jolted California into climate change leadership is the former bodybuilder and action movie hero Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Before his election in fall 2003, California was experiencing something of a malaise.  Governor Schwarzenegger resurrected a bipartisan action-oriented government and, molded by circumstance, became and environmental leader.

In signing an agreement between California and the United Kingdom on July 31, 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger proclaimed, “California will not wait for our federal government to take strong action on global warming…International partnerships are needed in the fight against global warming and California has a responsibility and a profound role to play to protect not only our environment, but to be a world leader on this issue as well.”

He had come a long way in a short time.  Governor Schwarzenegger’s second inaugural address in January 2007 made it strikingly clear that he had evolved into an accomplished politician.  He was now focused, serious, and increasingly savvy.  In the cauldron of politics, he was forging himself into a centrist politician, strongly committed to getting things done, especially on the environment.  He emphasized above all else the need for action on global warming.  He was using global warming as his platform to unite voters from both parties behind him-in stark contrast to what President Bush was doing in Washington, D.C.

How did this Austrian bodybuilder evolve into an environmental leader?  He got his chance to govern through an extraordinary set of circumstances.  In 2003, voters became disenchanted with the remoteness and single-minded fund-raising of Democratic governor, Gray Davis, and voted him out of office in a rare recall election.  This election bypassed the normal process of primaries in which each political party selects a candidate.  That shortcut was essential to Schwarzenegger’s election.  Schwarzenegger was a moderate Republican in a state where the Republican Party has become very conservative.  According to most political experts, Schwarzenegger couldn’t have won a regular Republican primary.  But in a free-for-all election, he didn’t need his party’s endorsement.

In the end, the Democrats couldn’t put forth a compelling candidate, and Schwarzenegger slid into power with 48.6 percent of the vote.  he had never held a government office of any type, elected or appointed, and had little policy knowledge.  But he had huge name recognition as a result of his extraordinary success first as a bodybuilder, winning seven Mr. Olympia world championships, and then as a movie star, known for his Terminator action movies.  He also had management savvy in building very successful businesses capitalizing on his fame, though this was much overlooked at the time.  Governor Schwarzenegger resurrected a bipartisan action-orientated government and, molded by circumstance, became an environmental leader.

He entered office speaking of “blowing up boxes” of government, eliminating hundreds of boards and agencies, and bringing a new order.  His style was to browbeat the legislature.  The honeymoon began to fade during his first year when he provoked his legislature opponents by calling them “girlie men,” offended protesting nurses by telling them “special interests don’t like me in Sacramento because I kick their butt,” and antagonized teachers by asking voters to curtail teachers’ rights to job security.  Every one of the propositions he put forth to voters in a special election in fall 2005 went down in defeat.  His popularity plummeted.

He soon righted himself.  He apologized to voters for not respecting them.  He abandoned his more bombastic language.  He engaged himself in the business of governing and forged working relationships with the Democratic-controlled legislature.  His popularity was resurrected with apologies and an ability to learn from his mistakes, coupled with willful rejection of ideology and partisanship.  By late 2006, his ratings were once again soaring.  With a cooperative legislature, he concluded a series of legislative milestones, capped by the precedent-setting Global Warming Solutions Act.  In his 2007 inaugural address, Schwarzenegger justified this landmark law on moral grounds and “because California genuinely has the power to influence the res of the nation, even the world.”

Schwarzenegger was a product of circumstances.  He wobbled toward a model of leadership and innovation.  He’s not an intellectual leader.  He’s a problem solver with charisma and strong management and communication skills, who surrounds himself with strong, competent people, not least of which is his wife, Maria Shriver.  He’s been molded by the experience of being a Republican in a Democratic state and living with a politically astute Kennedy wife.  His bipartisanship was illustrated by his appointment of Terry Tamminene, an ardent environmentalist, as secretary of California’s Environmental Protection Agency and later as secretary of the cabinet, and Susan Kennedy, a Democrat and former abortion right advocate, as his chief of staff.

The governor’s desire to simultaneously achieve a healthy environment and economy in the state has resonated well.  With strong support from the venture capital community and leaders of many high-tech Silicon Valley companies, he has spurred the state’s businesses to think green thoughts.  His unwavering commitment to California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, low-carbon fuel standard, and greenhouse gas standards for vehicles has had the cumulative effect of convincing even the most recalcitrant company that there’s no turning back.  Indeed, Schwarzenegger sees climate change policy and green tech as his legacy.  The question is whether the various rules and laws and what skeptics refer to as the governor’s globe-trotting happy talk will translate into ral action and change.

Deborah Gordon is a senior transportation policy analyst who has worked with the National Commission on Energy Policy, the Chinese government and many other organizations. Daniel Sperling is Professor of Engineering and Environmental Science and Founding Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis. Gordon and Sperling are the authors of Two Billion Cars: Driving Towards Sustainability which provides a concise history of America’s Love affair with cars and an overview of the global oil and auto industries. In the original article below they look at what Washington needs to do to support sustainability.

Washington policymakers may have been backed into a costly corner on the Detroit bail out, but the real measure of their mettle is whether they can help us innovate our way out of this debacle. Automaking must undergo fundamental transformational change. The country needs a roadmap. That’s where Congress and the new Administration come in.

Over 20 years of government inaction does not instill confidence, however. Glorying in cheap oil, ignoring mounting imports, avoiding climate action, and preciously protecting U.S. automakers gave birth to Hummers while promising battery technology grew up overseas in Japan, Korea, and, increasingly, China. Few auto advances have been made. And now we’re poised to lose those gains as the venture capitial driven electric-vehicle companies that sprang up in recent years close shop.

One sure fix out of the utter mess we’re in would be to seriously raise gasoline taxes. This would change the entire oil equation, promoting sustained vehicle and fuel innovations the likes of which America has never seen. But with today’s economy bloodied and raw, this appears decidedly off the table, at least for now.

Instead, with current gasoline prices at all time lows, a minuscule 58 cents-a-gallon in 1980 dollars, the U.S. will remain hooked on oil. Priorities to accelerate the commercialization of clean advanced vehicles could be further derailed by Congress as it orders up the next fuel du jour. Corn ethanol, for example, a clear energy and climate fiasco, has long been the recipient of massive public subsidies amounting to about $10 billion in 2008. Federal commitments to clean vehicle and energy R&D, on the other hand, have dwindled to nearly nothing.

Over and over, the public interest has been swamped by regional and special interests and the private desires of consumers. This trend needs to be turned around: innovation needs to serve the public good.

California has figured out how to do this. And when it comes to cars, they have been pushing the envelope for half a century. It is now time for Washington to stop resisting a winning strategy and follow suit.

Adopting new clean vehicle performance standards is the key. The government must resist the temptation to pick winning technologies. Instead, we need innovative performance goals that let automakers and consumers decide which clean cars to commercialize. California’s 1960s pollution laws brought us the first automotive emission control, positive crankcase ventilation. Zero-emission vehicle regulations of the 1990s gave birth to the Prius. Just imagine what vehicle innovations new federal standards could summon.

The single most effective near-term action Washington can take to accelerate the development and adoption of next-generation clean vehicle technologies – electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids, and fuel cell vehicles – with no direct cost to consumers, is to create new performance standards for near-zero emission vehicles. Each company would be required to produce a set number of near-zero emission vehicles based on their market share, with more credit given to highly efficient vehicles with longer driving ranges that are mass marketed. Such regulations focus the minds of automakers and their suppliers. Small innovative start-up companies also get into the game. New supply chains for low-carbon cars would sprout up in America. Green jobs would be created.

It’s not too late for Washington, and Detroit, to follow the leaders and reimagine our automaking future. The European Union is already pursuing a near-zero emission vehicle category with less than 50 grams of carbon dioxide pollution for each kilometer traveled (equivalent to 113 mpg for gasoline).

So, while large gas taxes are still a sensible long-term solution, Washington must give automakers clear marching orders now. Our policymakers may be risk adverse when it comes to taxation, but Congress is an accomplished regulator.

The auto bail out, volatile oil prices, conflicts in the Middle East, increasing fears of climate change, and intense competition are creating the perfect storm for transformational auto innovation. Washington must take the reins and steer entrepreneurs, engineers, and the public down the path to reinvent vehicles.

Last week Lorcan pointed to an interesting article [Even Gen X is aTwitter] with data about who’s using twitter. In addition to 57% being from California (really?) and 63% being male “…the age demographics of Twitterers show a dramatic shift. When the site became popular in early 2007, the majority of its visitors were 18-to-24-year-olds. Today the site's largest age demographic is 35-to-44-year-olds.”

David Lee King recently posted on his blog about how many patrons are already using twitter and other social media tools. “Yes, people in your community are already connecting and engaging with others via social media tools,” says David, “Are you?”

Over the last several weeks at WebJunction we received a number of support requests about user inability to view some of our videos about the new platform (here's an example with others linked here). In exploring the reasons why, we realized that some of our users in libraries still work in libraries that block access to youtube, blip.tv and the like. Reasons cited include bandwidth for networks that are already stretched. What should we say about our own Internet use and access to our IT admins? Our security and privacy colleagues? Our funding councils and governments?

Very simply, we must continue to articulate our need for access to both social media and social tools in terms of relevance to our patrons and our community. Without our knowledge of and participation in the social spheres where our patrons engage with each other, where new content is published and knowledge emerges, we can't stay relevant. And without relevance, we won't be around.

Update: let me just add that I don't care about twitter in particular. It's just a tool and one of many examples of things we should be exploring.

I am an online community builder for librarians. In short, my job, my actual job, is to help librarians find and connect with each other online. I've said many times that I think I have the best job in library land. Sometimes, honestly, like today, it's not all that. It's not that I get discouraged, though sometimes that happens too, as I'm sure happens in the course of many of our day-to-days, but rather that I find my job very, very difficult. Head. Banging. Against a Wall. Difficult.

The parts that are most challenging for me have to do with resources. In our environment, as in most, resources are limited, and even though my particular project is considered well-funded, and indeed we are, it is a constant struggle to align those resources towards absolute efficiency and effectiveness. Of course, resources aren't just the dollars. There's also our time and our staff. I work really hard, and I know the team that I work with works really hard, to try and make the best decisions that we can about how to line things up effectively. Still, things are changing around us so rapidly. The plans we make are almost never exactly manifested. We always dream much bigger than we're able to implement. We always want to do more than we're able to in a day. By the time we're implementing there are three, five, or ten more things we wish we would have known. How can we be more clever? do this smarter? start that sooner? (And I'm not even really talking about the technology here. I'm talking more generally, about every aspect of the work.)

The other thing is that everybody cares so much about this work. In some ways I think it's a burden to feel so passionately about libraries and community. I often wonder if caring about the work as much makes me less effective. Am I missing something by taking things as seriously? How can I infuse humor, light, and even some degree of dispassion into my work so that I can be as personally nimble as the technologies I use and advocate for?

One of the best books I've read on libraries and change is "The Thriving Library" by Marylaine Block. I love this book. She outlines the things that "thriving" libraries are doing - not as a recipe, but as an example of some things that we can draw into our own libraries and communities. Come to think of it, Robert Putnam does the same thing in his work "Better Together" where he looks at successful community building projects and says 'here are a few things that work. it's not a recipe. just something to think about. something to try.'

So fine, there's no recipe. There's no perfect process, no perfect "plan for results". I think I can deal with that. And maybe things get easier as you gain experience and move through your career, (and perhaps that's another story). In all, I'd still say I have the best job EVER. I even know somewhere that the fact that it's difficult for me, that I'm constantly feeling like I'm new at this and that there's a lot to learn, is part of the reason it's such a great job for me.

But maybe tomorrow could be easier. Maybe tomorrow my cleverness could just swoop in and *poof!* solve the tough questions currently in front of me. Shoot, it wouldn't even have to be my cleverness. It could be yours. Please?

This morning among other stalling tactics I have been practicing while I stubbornly resist finishing my now-overdue article for NextSpace, I scanned the interesting articles in the latest two print magazines to hit my desk: American Libraries and Governing. Both had cover stories on environmental topics, which was not surprising as Earth Day is in April, spring is finally coming, etc.

So after I mopped up the drool from all the great green library architecture featured this month, I flipped over to Governing, to see that Fayetteville, AR has hired a person to help them be greener in the city government. And the guy has become known as Mr. Sustainability. AND he's all of 30 years old. How cool is that?! Nice that he's gotten some recognition for his work, and I hope it inspires some of us to be greener in our workplaces, too. Do you turn your monitor off at night? Flip the lights out? Walk occasionally, instead of always riding the elevator?

It strikes me that libraries are part of a not-so-big, green lifestyle by implicit design: you don't need to own the book in order to read it, absorb its knowledge and share it with others.

May be we should start capitalizing on our built-in green-ness, in addition to our beautiful new LEED-certified buildings. Can you appoint a Mr. (or Ms.) Sustainability for your staff? Or maybe it's a rotating distinction, that different staff members (or a volunteer!) wears for a couple of weeks, notes behaviors, and then suggests easy changes.

If you have a cotton/canvas library bag available for sale, why not team up with local grocery stores and make you bag available for purchase at the grocery store check-out? Whole Foods is aiming to be plastic-bag free by Earth Day. If they can do it, so can your grocery.