Interview With Frances Beinecke, President of Natural Resources Defense Council

TH: Back to the science: Can you speak a little bit on short-term targets. Everyone wants to talk about long-term targets, but we often skip over strong 2020 targets...

FB: ...No, in 2020 the legislation has 17-20% [emission reductions], depending on which bill you're looking at. That's obviously the range the US is going to look at. 20% in the Senate is obviously the high mark, and hopefully it doesn't get any weaker... Complimentary measures to those targets are very important too. Because if you make very, very significant investments, particularly in efficiency...and in avoided deforestation, we think you can actually get beyond the 20%.

So, often [when] you're talking to Europe they say you should be 40% below 1990... But we didn't get going; so we can't do that. You have develop a target that you can actually achieve. It may not be the perfect target. But as we say, through complimentary measures you can actually get further reductions.

TH: Talking about implementation, how do we actually make this switch to a low-carbon economy? Per capita energy US is gigantic...

FB: ...As you're reminded every time you go to China or to India, they tell you directly what the difference is. It's embarrassingly enormous...

TH: ...It is. If India is way over on one end of the spectrum and the US is over on the other, how then do we get energy usage into a sustainable place?

FB: Good question... (laughs) From our experience, we've worked on this for a long time. We [in the US] have enormous per capita use of every natural resource out there, including energy. But we do have good examples.

For thirty years we've worked on energy efficiency in California, and for twenty years California's per capita energy use has been flat, whereas the rest of the nation has shot up. California's economy has grown significantly during that time. So, keeping the per capita use flat has not affected their economic growth. That's a very important message and demonstration that you can take to the rest of the country.

How did they do it? They made the commitment to significant, big investments in efficiency. They did that through utility reform, et cetera, et cetera. So the kilowatt-hour price is higher than the national average -- though it's comparable to what we pay here [in New York City] -- but their per capita energy use is lower, so their energy bills aren't higher.

I really think California's an important example. Particularly for the rest of the nation. Because nobody thinks that Californians are suffering. People think, efficiency, deprivation, going without... but nobody thinks people in California are going without. They have a very pleasant lifestyle, and whatever has happened to make them so much more efficient than the rest of the nation hasn't caused economic downturn of any consequence, hasn't affected their lifestyle at all. It's just creating things that are a lot more efficient and use a lot less. That's where technology comes in.

TH: What role then does infrastructure play? If New York or California have half the per capita emissions of much of the rest of the country -- around ten tons a year -- in the middle of the country, or in places that are mostly suburban or rural, how can we change infrastructure so that it would benefit...

FB: ...We have to look at where the major parts of population are. Maybe eventually there's something you can do in rural America -- one thing you could do is have much more efficient vehicles, much more efficient farm equipment, construction equipment -- but the primary focus has to be where the majority of the population is, in urban areas.

When we first started on urban issues in New York, we were like 'Oh, these cities they're hotbeds of pollution, air quality, water quality.' Now they're kind of beacons of efficiency.

Multi-family housing is much more efficient than single-family house. Mass transit. The amount of electricity used per capita. Water used per capita. Gasoline used per capita. It is so much lower than what it is in other parts of the country. So, you can take these models and actually replicate them in other places.

What we have to do is go to cities that have not developed that infrastructure and develop it. More investments in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Phoenix, Houston: To develop smart-growth strategies so you're actually developing around transit hubs. Which is beginning to catch on, quite significantly.

These [other] cities are very spread out, so the idea of having a contained public transit system like the subway, which would be enormously expensive, is not going to work in a place spread over huge, enormous differences. But you can have surface things, that are a lot less expensive, but still available -- whether it's light rail or bus lanes or whatever it happens to be.

The only way to become more efficient is to ensure Americans have many more choices in the marketplace. Whether its buying their TV, their appliance, taking light rail or buses to work, whatever it happens to be. If you don't have those choices, you're not going to make them. If they are hard to find, you're not going to make them.

TH: I can see technology and energy efficiency getting us to very low per capita emissions. But then it comes down to just the amount of natural resources we consume. How do we bring that resource consumption into line with something that is sustainable, and equitably, without some serious soul-searching in the United States?

FB: There's a growing number of Americans who are doing the serious soul-searching. It's not a huge number, but I look at Wal-Mart's commitment to sell 100 million compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and they sold 145 million. That's reaching a huge amount of the American public, who are making that choice.

That demonstrates that if Americans are given the choice, they'll take it. Increasingly people want to know what their greener options are. I think as we can demonstrate success that number's going to grow. It's very hard to dictate that. That's why providing options is so important.

I look at the sustainable initiatives of cities around America. Now the cities are vying: Mayor Bloomberg has PlaNYC, Mayor Daly has his plan, 500 cities have signed up for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. I think those are all good signs, because basically that's where people live. It's not the messaging at the federal level or the state level. It's messaging in their communities; and people are becoming more sophisticated, more educated, and more aware.

If you talk to young people coming up through the school system, they're much aware than even my children's generation was, and definitely more than mine. I'm optimistic that those sort of lifestyle questions, and the choices will be adopted more and more into the American lifestyle. But it's not going to be an easy thing, at all.

I'm kind of optimistic, because I'm always an optimist.

If you look at automobiles, now every time you read about cars it's about plug-in hybrids and electric batteries, and for thirty years we've had no productive conversation on cars. None. We haven't been able to get off the dime, even on fuel efficiency. In the last year the conversation has changed dramatically as, obviously, the car companies went bankrupt and now the federal government owns 60% of them, or whatever it is. So there's a very different conversation going on.

Similarly, on the utility side, if you actually got the utilities to make these big efficiency investments, you'd see a dramatic drop in emissions. There are certainly strategies out there that could be translated into very, very positive results. And, of course, our job is to make that happen.

Copenhagen is just a step along the way. This is the challenge of the century, of our generation. This is day in and day out. There are lots of challenges we've worked on that take twenty years to bear fruit -- acid rain was one, chlorofluorocarbons was another -- this is a lot bigger than those.

I know I'll be working on this every day of my career. And the people who are just starting out here at NRDC, in their twenties, they will be too.

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