Reply #31: Approximately 3 months before they changed policy in 2009... [View All]

[kristopher]

Approximately 3 months before they changed policy in 2009 a Chinese academic published the first comprehensive assessment of renewable resources in China. Three months later when the change in policy was announced it was completely unexpected. I think it is reasonable to conclude that they simply didn't realize the potential before. They had been fighting us for a long time on carbon caps and other trade problems while going though an incredible revision of culture involving more than a billion people, so they had a lot on their plates and were basically, I believe, on autopilot following the standard global development plan that the World Band had been chartering in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.

This change in policy was also around the time it became clear that Obama was not going to revitalize the process that created Kyoto. That top-down UN based consensus approach was producing some results; but it gave too many openings for the obstructionist forces that you wrote of and they could game the system and/or roadblock any coordinated advancement in the majority of the world.

It is my belief, based purely on inferences, that Obama has followed a course designed to encourage the global economic development of renewables in the area where they are most likely to be exploited for their latent economic and lifestyle enhancing potential. That has long been one of the three "windows of opportunity" so to speak, that dominate the current structure of energy related decisions. PThe other two being climate and national security. Post-Iraq and 911, the national security issue and its related costs in human life and money became clear not only for the US, but everywhere - especially, again with the sudden growth in demand from China and India.

We'd been working with climate as a motivator since 1992 and the feeling was that we had really accomplished all that seemed likely to happen with the "grand agreement" strategy.

That left the profit motive to be exploited. Thanks to Kyoto, a few countries had behaved like adults and taken the point position on pushing through policies designed to promote the growth of manufacturing infrastructure. It was recognized that the technology was there, but the kinks had to be worked out of both the policy structures to move investment to the proper places, and the mechanics of the actual process of grid integration. Since 1992 we've learned a vast amount and it is becoming more clear by the day that this process of transition is hastening far more through the economic engines than it possibly could with large-scale, top down political dictates watered down to get the agreement of those who stand to be the losers in this. We are at last, I believe, truly giving the likes of the Kock Brothers the great big royal renewable finger and I don't think there is a damned thing they can do to even slow it down.

All, IMHO.