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In Power to the People, Vaithesswaran makes a convincing case that the
provision of decentralized green electricity is a key issue for this
century. The world community will fail, in both
alleviating poverty and stabilizing our climate, if we don't rapidly
re-envision and implement green electricity, worldwide. And the
decentralized provision model is persuasive. And while it's not just
about China and India, those two countries deserve a large share of our
attention.
My 'scaling up' idea relates to the 350.org
campaign. What if one of the core ideas that they celebrate, diffuse
and promote is locally-based clean energy? In other words, what if a
key aspect of 350.org would be to spread the word about why the rapid
implementation of a local, green electricity future is an essential
part of a 'get to 350' strategy - and to celebrate successful examples
of that, worldwide?
I think that this works at several levels, in terms of our model of social change.
- It
helps to redefine the discourse of the global climate movement. With
this kind of goal, 350.org becomes a facilitator of the model of social
change that we have come to in this course:
- States that ‘oversee’,
that encourage multiple approaches, that promote locally-based solutions, and
that complement civil society
- Social entrepreneurs that are rewarded
for testing new ideas, for scaling up new ideas, and for spreading new ideas
- Organizations that
promote social justice, local rights, and strong sustainability
- Accordingly, it helps to redefine the discourse in countries
worldwide. Climate activists in Brazil, let's say, would actively
promote clean-electricity solutions in their movement roles, as opposed
to (exclusively anyway) trying to lobby for 'climate policy.'
- In
turn, this would help folks in their own countries to imagine how this
electrification process can be accelerated, which will lead them to
start to envision how their own institutions (think metis here) need to change in order to to get there
- There's
a nice incentive-compatible aspect to this, in terms of the politics.
Whereas it's easy for an elected official to fend off calls for climate
legislation ('Too expensive, let the other countries go first'), it's
harder to do so with decentralized clean energy. It can quickly become
a great 'what have you done for me lately?' tool for voters (who also
might otherwise be less interested in the climate movement, by the
way.) And if 350.org shares, with voters around the world, examples of
green rural electrification that works, this information -- think
videos whihc can be shown on cell phones -- could be put in front of
local politicians with the question: 'why not us?'
Thoughts?
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I think trying to promote local decentralized energy is a good place to start. Not only does this this give elected officials a smaller scope to deal with, but decentralized energy is a more efficient way to provide energy (as opposed to centralized energy that is shipped from location x to location z). However, such technology can be expensive, still giving elected officials an incentive to wait until other countries make the switch first. How will the developing nations access such technology? Will it fall on the shoulders of developed nations to help developing nations make the transition to decentralized energy?