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Monday, July 22, 2013

Kevin Bundy: Staff Attorney, Climate Change

Kevin Bundy is an attorney at the climate law institute located at the Center for Biological Diversity. He mainly focuses on studying climate change issues. Bundy’s specialty involves working with existing laws and addressing the problem of climate change, specifically the Federal Clean Air Act.
We asked for Bundy’s opinion on Obama’s new climate plan. Bundy was impressed by Obama’s serious intake on the problem, and thinks people need to do more than Obama is proposing in order to confront the severity of the crises. Bundy states that we need to start turin out economy around to the point where greenhouse gas emissions start to decline rapidly. In addition, more industry and manufacturing is happening and there is more of a demand for things. All of these actions drive emissions up. Bundy would like to see more from the president because he thinks that Obama has more power to deal with this problem. Although Bundy was also impressed at the end of the speech because the president makes a plea to everyone by persuading the people to talk to neighbors and friends and put pressure on them about this issue. Bundy also believes that it is a very important component that nobody in power is going to take any steps to annoy the coal and oil industry, especially the wealthy people who have an interest in things staying the way they are, unless their are real “ground spots” or political pressure to do something about this problem. One of the actions Bundy does about this issue  is work in individual cities across the United States and support the “Clean Air Act Campaign”, by trying to get cities to pass resolutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There are already sixty-four cities that have already done this, which gives them a voice during debate and also gets the residents of cities a chance to become active and talk to their local elected officials. This benefits them because the democracy is closer to home and more direct to talk to somebody at council meetings.  
There are many misconceptions about climate change. When we asked Bundy about what he thinks the misconceptions are, they said that it’s either not happening, and climate change is not the fault of humans. These facts are the result of a campaign funded largely by the fossil fuel industry and the people who are associated with them to spread misinformation about what the science of climate change really is. Bundy asks the questions, “Is climate change really happening?” and “Do humans have something to do with it”. These questions have a lot of scientific research and many people question. Bundy doesn’t think that they can keep this campaign up for much longer. Bundy also thinks that we have some natural inclination to not want to believe that the problem is as bad as it really looks like it is. Reading many of the latest science articles, he says it is a parade of really scary stuff coming out. Lastly he thinks we have to overcome our own complacency in some ways and start to talk about what is really happening and address it.
When asked about cars being run on electricity, he believes there are a couple different things that need to happen, in terms of their popularity of the market, being affordable, and more widely used. He believes that first step to improve on electric cars is to make the batteries lighter, smaller, and more efficient. The batteries should also hold a charge longer. The second step is to build an infrastructure that will allow you to plug your car and refuel it in a more convenient way. A lot of people who have electric cars now will use it locally. They don’t want to go further away from their house. Because unlike the many gas stations, there aren’t many electricity stations on every corner. We have an infrastructure that supports liquid transportation fuels, fossil fuels, and gasoline. But unfortunately we don’t have an infrastructure for electric cars. Bundy says that we need to put more money into transit and into lifestyles that don’t depend on everyone having their own car. Putting public transit infrastructure in place is important to get people out of private cars and reduce driving. Electric cars will only go so far towards helping out, and we have to generate the electricity too. Fortunately you’re not making much of a dent in term of you’re carbon dioxide if you’re driving an electric car where the region where most of your electricity comes from coal fired power plants. Overall, Bundy states that more people should put public transit infrastructure in place by driving an electric car, especially if you’re in a part of a country where there’s more gas fired generations or more solar.

--Joanmarie Swanson, Earthscope Student Reporter

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