This is the second part of my recap of the 350 Conference at Columbia on Saturday, May 2nd. Read Part 1.

The afternoon of the 350 conference started out with a panel presentation on Climate Law, Policy, and Economics. First up was Michael Gerrard, an environmental lawyer and director of the Center for Climate Law at Columbia. His speech centered on legislative and regulatory responses to climate change. His view differed from Dr. Hansen’s in that he thinks that neither a carbon tax nor a cap and trade scheme are enough—both can be easily made porous, and both leave out large segments of the economy.

He supports massive regulation to close the holes that will inevitably open up in carbon taxing or cap and trade: technology standards, efficiency standards for appliances and other machinery, utility regulation, road use pricing, a floor price for gasoline, land use regulations to end sprawl, agricultural regulation to end soil-degrading practices, and, most controversially, regulation on advertising that encourages high levels of consumption. We have limits on advertising for harmful things like cigarettes and liquor, he said, so why not put limitations on ads for big cars, cheap imported stuff, and other environmentally harmful products? He showed this famous image and suggested that the U.S. Government put together a program to promote thrift and efficiency.

As he rolled through slide after slide of proposed regulation, I kept thinking, “Dang! That’s a lot of regulation!” I understand that much of it is necessary, and focused more on the supply side—manufacturers and designers—but it still got my red-blooded American hackles up a bit. I was reminded of last fall when I was in San Francisco and saw that I was mandated by law to give my seat to the elderly or disabled. Do we really need laws like this to get us to do the right thing? Maybe we do…

I liked his ideas about promoting thrift and efficiency better. These are core American values that we have gotten away from—been pushed away from, in fact, by other forms of advertising that create false needs that would have us consume until there’s nothing left. Seems only fair that, in the marketplace of ideas, values of frugality and making the most of what we have should get some time, too. This may also be a good way to bring people with different, more conservative values into the discussion.

Next up was Dr. Gernot Wagner, an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund, who spoke about the huge costs of making the transition to a low carbon world, and how to finance them. He shared the idea of Clean Investment Budgets, in which developing countries would sell some of their carbon allowances to developed countries with the requirement that they use the proceeds to invest in reforestation and clean technologies.

After Dr. Wagner, we heard from Kevin Conrad, the Special Envoy and Ambassador for Environment and Climate Change for Papua New Guinea. He began by explaining that people in developing countries who cut down their forests aren’t acting out of some deep-seated hatred for the environment, or even out of a lack of interest in climate change. They do what they do because they have hopes and dreams for their own children, and, in the current economic paradigm, their forests are worth more cut than growing.

He suggested a shift in attitude—instead of looking at these people as impoverished, we should see them as rich, because they are in control of perhaps the most precious resource we have in the fight against climate change. He also made the point that, although efficiency and carbon markets can get us part of the way to the CO2 reductions we need, there’s still a huge gap between the reductions they can provide, and the targets we need to reach. The only thing that can bridge that gap, he says, is protection and renewal of the Earth’s great forests. We literally can’t get to 350 without them.

There’s also the fact that it takes time to develop and roll out the new technologies we need to reduce emissions in the developed world. But “not cutting down trees” is a technology that everyone can understand and can be implemented today. Our task is to make it economically feasible for the people who live in these forests to support themselves and grow their communities without cutting them down. This involves partnership and trust between developed and developing countries.

Conrad was an eloquent and passionate speaker. Through him, it was easy to see the possibility of a new way for countries to work together on a global scale to change the way we do things.

Next up was educator Jaimie Cloud, founder of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education in New York. She told us about a fishing game her organization has developed, in which participants must learn to work together in order to avoid crashing the system. Having seen many groups of children and adults play this game, she’s been able to identify the main mental models under which we operate in an unsustainable way:

• Iceberg model: In which we react to symptoms rather than root causes.
• Scarcity model: We hoard or become martyrs and neither works
• Bummer model: This can’t be done.
• Social trap: Do what everyone else is doing.
• Zero sum game: There can be only one winner and in order for me to win, you have to lose
• Classic economic model: Resources are unlimited and everything can be substituted.
• Masters of the universe model: We are in control and can fix it.
• Unawareness: We simply don’t think at all.

She then pointed out how, even though we might not be certain of our mental models, that doesn’t prevent us from using them, resulting in the crash of the fishing game over and over when she runs it with adults. In contrast, the children she works with seem to have much more facility with seeing through these faulty mental models, and usually stop crashing the game after the first go. They easily get the point that if they work together and don’t take more than their share, the game works out better for everyone.

As someone who’s very interested in what internal changes will be needed to create change in the external world, I was fascinated by Cloud’s talk. We need to create new mental models, she said, based on recognizing and appreciating limits, seeing systems as wholes rather than parts, and understanding that life is not a zero sum game, but one in which the “mathematics of the golden rule” mean that working together works better.

Dr. Johannes Lehmann, co-founder and Chair of the Board of the International Biochar Initiative, was up next. He explained what biochar is—pyrolized plant matter that is then turned back into the Earth, sequestering carbon and enriching soil—and described how it can be used to turn waste plant matter into a valuable carbon sink.

At the beginning of the conference, we’d each received a flyer from biofuelwatch.org.uk warning against biochar and the International Biochar Initiative specifically, saying that the IBI was seeking funding for massive tree plantations to be burned and converted into biochar. Perhaps Dr. Lehmann had seen this flyer, because he was careful to lay out some caveats on biochar: it is not a silver bullet, but one of many possible strategies; and it doesn’t make sense on a massive scale, because any gains you get from using it would be eaten up by transporting the plant matter to the pyrolizing facility.

One of the anti-biochar activists was on hand to question Lehmann, and said that he seemed to have changed his message a great deal in recent weeks, but she also seemed to believe that the large-scale intentions of the IBI remain unchanged.

Whether Dr. Lehmann was telling the entire truth about IBI’s aims remains to be seen, but his proposals seemed much more reasonable and modest than what was claimed on the anti-biochar flyer. Yes, planting hundreds of hectares of trees just to burn them down sounds pretty crazy. But if biochar-creating facilities can be created on a small scale and put in places that have organic mass to dispose of anyway, and if it works to sequester some of the carbon, then why not do it? At least, we should allow science to determine if it’s worth it or not.

The final speaker of the day was Richard Heinberg, Peak Oil scholar and author of Peak Everything and the upcoming book Blackout about Peak Coal. He showed data on coal production in the U.S. and in other markets around the world, concluding that Peak Coal will happen between 2025 and 2030. However, this simple lack of supply will not be enough to get us to the emissions reductions we need—we need to consciously phase out the burning of coal and other fossil fuels, and soon.

Beyond this, he says that it will not be possible to replace our current energy usage with alternative sources in time, and instead we must look into reducing our energy needs through efficiency and through lifestyle changes. History shows a direct correlation between fossil fuel usage and economic growth, so we will have to look to new economic models not predicated on material growth but based instead on health, education, and cultural expression.

Heinberg closed by pointing us to the idea of Transition Towns, highlighted recently in the New York Times Magazine, where citizens come together to strengthen their local economies and learn vital skills for living with less energy.

The point that Heinberg made, about looking elsewhere for our ideas of “the good life,” struck me as a particularly strong one. Since overconsumption doesn’t make humans happy anyway, while health and education and actualization do, it only makes sense, at least in the already-developed world.

Overall, this conference provided a comprehensive view of the science of climate change and a glimpse into some of the possibilities for handling it.