Climate Change Resources in California

Scientists predict that a warming world is here. All of us, big businesses, small businesses, and consumers alike, are going to have to adjust. The small business community would do well to take up the challenge now, while there is time to deliberate and to craft cost-effective responses it can live with.

There's been virtually no research on what global warming means for small business, even though 23 million U.S. small businesses constitute one-half of the economy. We need to know more.

Extreme weather events, for example, can wipe out an entire region's small businesses in one fell swoop. And they can't readily bounce back from disruptions caused by natural disasters.

Reducing energy waste in U.S. homes, shops, offices, and other buildings will rely on thousands of small concerns in every state that design, make, sell, install, and service energy-efficient appliances, lighting products, heating, air-conditioning, and other equipment.

Inventing and installing technological fixes to curb greenhouse gas emissions must rely on small business innovators and entrepreneurs to produce "clean-tech" breakthroughs in photovoltaics, distributed energy, fiber-optic sensors, and the like.

California's recent reports on how to cope with climate change emphasizes the need for innovation -- and small business is the hotbed of innovation. Large corporations are better at dispersing it -- but innovation is facing a need and solving it. Kitchen sink, garage, or small lab -- individual creativity and persistence will make the difference in our society's struggle to change our way of living and working to be more in line with what our natural systems can tolerate.

We've overstepped our natural resources capacity to support local communities. Change is coming. Let's welcome it with creative determination and a shared sense of hope and self-discipline.

In England, Shell oil company has taken an aggressive approach to getting involved in the change from oil-based business to alternative energy. Along with investment directly in alternative energies, Shell has started the Shelk Springboard program to help small and medium size businesses copy, and grow, with climate change strategies.

The program demonstrates the commercial opportunity that tackling climate change offers to small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). Shell Springboard is a Shell awards program that encourages companies to see climate change as not only a major environmental challenge but a substantial business opportunity.

The research identifies major opportunities for small and medium sized enterprises in a wide range of markets, by both responding to consumer demand for environmentally friendly goods and to demands created by government action. The biggest identified markets for SMEs in 2010 will be:

• Building regulations for commercial and industrial use - £950m
• Renewable electricity - £800m
• Renewable road transport fuels - £500m
• Domestic energy efficiency - £400m
• Building regulations for domestic use - £275m

The urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions offers opportunities to the nimble. There is now opportunity for a wide range of devices and services, which a decade ago would have made no economic sense, and for which there would have been no demand.

James Smith, Chair of Shell UK, added: “For business, tackling climate change is both a necessity and a huge opportunity. This creates a huge new opportunity for businesses nationally and internationally."

We can step up to the challenge through nimble, small businesses and the scientific depth in our universities can contribute.

SOURCE: www.shellspringboard.org/

CALIFORNIA RESOURCES

The California Climate Change Portal

The Center is organized into four branches:

• Climate Monitoring, Analysis, and Modeling
• Economic Impacts
• Carbon Sequestration
• Competitive Research Grants

The Climate Change Center is organized as a “virtual” institution with sites at both the UC Berkeley campus and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (UC San Diego campus). The Berkeley Center, based at the Richard & Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy, is focusing on economic and policy analysis, while the Scripps Center focuses on physical climate modeling.

The Berkeley Center

Recent reports:

California Applications Program: CAP

US Global Change Research Program

REPORT: Climate Change Impacts on the United States The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change.

Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University

The California cimate Change Project at the Woods Institute has an extensive advisory council comprised of members who have extensive knowledge and expertise in climate challenges. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation provided initial funding. Who are they?

California Climate Change Project Advisory Council

• Adrienne Alvord, Principal Consultant, Office of Assembly Member Fran Pavley
• Anne Baker, Deputy Secretary for External Affairs, California Environmental Protection Agency
• Lisa Bicker, President, California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF)
• Ralph Cavanagh, Senior Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council
• Karen Douglas, Director, California Global Warming Initiatives, Environmental Defense
• Ira Ehrenpreis, General Partner, Technology Partners
• Michael Gelobter, Executive Director, Redefining Progress
• T.J. Glauthier, President, TJG Energy Associates, LLC
• Dian Grueneich, Commissioner, California Public Utilities Commission
• Catherine Hackney, Director, State Legislative Policy, Southern California Edison
• Michael Hanemann, Director, California Climate Change Center UC Berkeley
• Hal Harvey, Director, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Environment Program
• Alan Lloyd, President, International Council on Clean Transportation
• Jason Mark, California Director, Union of Concerned Scientists
• Robert Parkhurst, Global Environmental Program Manager, Hewlett Packard
• Wendy Pulling, Director, Environmental Policy, Pacific Gas & Electric Company
• Walter Reid, Director, Conservation and Science, David and Lucile Packard Foundation
• Art Rosenfeld, Commissioner, California Energy Commission
• Linda Schuck, Director, California Climate Change Project, Woods Institute
• Byron D. Sher, Emeritus Professor of Law, Stanford University
• Dan Sperling, Director, Institute for Transportation Studies, UC Davis
• Brian Sullivan, Manager, West Coast Government Affairs, BP
• Barton H. Thompson, Director, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

It will help to meet assessment needs of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Convention to Combat Desertification, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and the Convention on Migratory Species, as well as needs of other users in the private sector and civil society.

The MA focuses on ecosystem services (the benefits people obtain from ecosystems), how changes in ecosystem services have affected human wellbeing, how ecosystem changes may affect people in future decades, and response options that might be adopted at local, national, or global scales to improve ecosystem management and thereby contribute to human well-being and poverty alleviation.

The Response Options Working Group assessed the effectiveness of various types of response options, both historical and current, examining the strengths and weaknesses of various response options that have been used to manage ecosystem services. Their report also identifies some promising opportunities for improving human well-being while conserving ecosystems. The Responses Working Group determined that an effective set of responses to ensure the sustainable management of ecosystems requires substantial changes in institutions and governance, economic policies and incentives, social and behavior factors, technology, and knowledge. Prompt and effective actions in these areas, as described in the report, could substantially lessen the severity of ecosystem problems in the next several decades.

Reports of the findings are beginning to be released in 2006.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution