How to ensure that solutions for climate stabilization optimize adaptation and mitigation, maximize the co-benefits and minimize the unintended consequences for health, ecology and the global economy?

Life cycle analysis to assess the health, environmental and economic costs of proposed technologies and practices is a methodology for making healthy and sustainable energy choices. Some measures, like burning ethanol/gasoline mixtures produce ground-level ozone that contributes to the heat island effect (worsening adaptation to heat waves). The coal life cycle, from mountaintop removal to pulverization to combustion has multiple health and ecological impacts. Carbon dioxide capture and storage address only the very end of a long stream of hazards and emissions.

On the other hand, some solutions offer multiple benefits.

 Transport: Plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) minimize the burning of all substances and are suitable for cars, trucks, buses, trains, ships and planes. By reducing black carbon emissions, ozone precursors and CO2, they clean and cool cities.

 The grid: Such vehicles must plug into a cleanly-powered smart grid. Al Gore’s proposal for a smart grid in 10 years for $1.5 to $3 trillion provides the goal, timetable and economic stimulus needed to move to a robust, job-creating, well-adapted and climate-stabilizing backbone for the low carbon economy.

 Healthy cities: A healthy cities initiative – with green buildings, rooftop gardens, walking paths, biking lanes, tree-lined streets, open space, congestion control, smart growth and improved public transport – will decrease vehicular miles traveled, promote exercise, save money, create jobs and advance climate-stabilizing technologies. Green cities connected by electric light rails and railroads will reduce highway and short-haul airway traffic.

Ecological design principles: Making our energy system resilient, robust and adaptable requires using ecological design principles: combining hybrids of power generation at all scales, “smart technologies,” and new generation of batteries. Triangulation of distributed, regional and central generation decreases vulnerabilities in the face of more heat waves and storms, and loss of hydropower from disappearing glaciers.

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