© REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

With so many cars trapped at home with their owners, oil prices have fallen to the lowest level in decades, triggering crisis meetings of OPEC plus. The price of oil has even dipped below zero at times—producers will rather pay someone to take the oil off their hands than pay someone to shut down their wells.

The problem of oil oversupply is about as old as the industry itself. Long before Saudi princes and Russian presidents were arguing over supply cuts, the free market-loving US state of Texas was limiting local production to support higher prices. Even today, the industry’s solutions are sometimes, well, crude. When shale drillers produce superfluous natural gas along with their oil, they simply burn it in the sky in a practice known as “flaring”.

In order to mitigate climate change, low-carbon sources of energy like solar power will have to supplant oil products as our most important source of energy. But new energy sources are no less vulnerable to the oversupply problem. In fact, the more renewable energy in an electricity system, the trickier things can get.

Brimming over with Sunlight

The coronavirus lockdowns are turning excess electricity into a real problem. Chinese coal miners are calling for production cuts, while the United Kingdom is preparing to pay windfarms to shut down on short notice to avoid congestion on the grid and blackouts. Electricity prices are down across the EU, too. The basic problem for electricity is the same as that for oil: lower demand means higher supply and falling prices.

But electricity, unlike oil, cannot sit in a tanker or pipeline until prices recover. In the words of Gretchen Bakke in her book The Grid, “the grid must be balanced; consumption must always match production… [Electricity] cannot be boxed or stored or shipped. It is always used the same instant it is made.”

Although it is possible to store electricity as energy that can generate electricity later, for example by pumping water from a low area to a high area and allowing it to rush through a turbine when needed, energy storage is very limited today: at any given moment the EU can generate 20 times more electricity than it has the capacity to store. The vast majority of that storage is in the aforementioned hydropower, not batteries.

Humans have traditionally worked around these limitations by storing fuel (coal, gas) and burning it to create electricity as needed. The problem is that producers have no control over the “fuel” for solar power, the sun’s rays. While the danger of solar undersupply is well known—how to store solar power to use it at night or in dark winters?—the reverse problem of oversupply can arise when solar is at its most effective, soaking up the noon sun while consumers are in the park.

Sometimes solar power is worth less than nothing. Germany occasionally exports small amounts of power at negative prices to neighboring countries; this is happening more and more frequently as renewable generation expands. In fact, due to the successful expansion of wind power in the North Sea, Germany has had to install devices called “phase shifters” at its borders to prevent electricity from spilling over into the Dutch or Polish grids, overwhelming them with cheap, clean power.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Yet just as little oil is actually delivered for -$1, negative electricity prices don’t necessarily mean consumers get paid for turning on the toaster; rather, they are a signal to grid operators that they should shut down some electricity generation because there is nowhere to send the power. Coal or gas power plants are typically the first to go because they generally have higher operating costs than solar, where the fuel costs nothing. Having to turn these plants down or off and then on again (“cycling” in the jargon) is a huge pain for their owners, who lose out on revenue and sometimes damage their boilers and turbines in the process.

Sensible government policy to support the expansion of renewable power can further complicate things for grid operators and owners of other types of power plants. The foundational law of Germany’s Energiewende, the Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz (EEG), gives renewable power priority access to the grid and requires grid operators to pay a certain price for it regardless of demand. Many US states let owners of residential solar panels reduce their bills by the amount of energy they send to the grid, no matter how little it is worth at the time. US solar power producers whose income is protected by government regulation can sell their power for next to nothing and drive competitors out of business, whether their emissions are low (nuclear) or high (coal).

In fact, because the sun is so fickle, solar power imposes considerable costs on the whole system. The 2019 OECD report “The Costs of Decarbonization” compared a system with 50 percent renewable power to a base case system that runs entirely on fossil fuels and found that the renewable-heavy system increased total system-level costs by 42 percent. That’s because the renewable-heavy system needs to invest more to avoid both undersupply, e.g. by keeping some coal or gas plants on standby, and oversupply. (None of this is a reason to stick with fossil fuels, which impose much higher costs on society as a whole than do renewables.)

A Victim of Its Own Success

The public might have little sympathy for operators of coal-burning plants who are losing profits, but the oversupply problem is increasingly coming back to bite solar itself. The problem is “value deflation.” As Varun Sivaram explains in his book Taming the Sun, “even if the cost of solar falls as a result of increasing deployment, its value might fall even faster. That’s because the more solar is installed, the less the electricity it generates in the middle of the day is needed.” In other words, the first installed solar panel is very useful and easy to integrate into the system, but the latest one might only add electricity when the system needs it the least, when all of its predecessors are also generating.

The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated value deflation in markets with a high penetration of solar power. For example, in California, stay-at-home orders have depressed electricity demand from commercial and industrial users. As a result, the grid operator has been forced to curtail—or throw away—record quantities of solar and wind power that are worthless when generated in excess of sagging demand.

Welcome to OSEC

What to do about oversupply? There might not be an Organization of Solar-Exporting States to regulate production, but there are two approaches to keeping electricity supply and demand in balance.

The first is to improve energy storage so there is somewhere to put excess supply. The price of batteries is falling fast, and electric cars are essentially batteries on wheels. The more electric cars there are on the roads, the more storage there is for solar power. Another option is to use solar power to split water molecules and produce hydrogen, which, like oil, can be stored as a dense liquid fuel: in supertankers, in national strategic reverses, in pipelines, and in the hydrogen car in the garage. Finally, there are innovative possibilities for storing solar power as heat, like the concentrated solar plants that use mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays on a giant tank of molten salt.

The second is to increase potential demand. Sivaram, until recently the Chief Technology Officer of ReNew Power, India’s largest renewable energy company, highlights in his book a number of clever ways to do so, like using excess solar power at desalination plants to turn ocean water into drinking water, or heating hot water tanks during the sunny afternoon so they are ready for evening showers. Major institutions are already trying to shift demand to match supply. The EU Clean Energy Package requires power companies to offer “dynamic pricing” tariffs, so that customers will be aware of the best time to charge their car or turn on the dryer. Google announced in late April that its data centers will work harder when the sun is shining.

It is also essential to increase the size of electricity grids by building interconnectors to allow the transfer of electricity from place to place. If the grid is large enough, there should always be a customer somewhere: solar farms in Spain could power dining room lights in Hungary, where the sun would already be going down.

The post Carbon Critical: The Sun Always Rises appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Yves Herman

Climate change has entered a new phase. The alarm signals of an ever more rapid change in the biosphere are increasing. At the same time, it is becoming a decisive political factor. Hundreds of thousands of young people are pioneering a new extra-parliamentary climate opposition. The young bring the old along with them. Climate protection was already a central motivation for voters in the recent European elections.

The issue has what it takes to reshape the political landscape, and not only in Germany. If the gap between the climate policy impatience of growing sections of society and the climate policy inertia of politics and business deepens, it could lead to a legitimacy crisis of the market economy and liberalism. Those who want to make both institutions future-proof must face up to the ecological challenge.

The modern industrial age has up to now been based on the seemingly unlimited availability of fossil fuels. They have propelled a tremendous increase in production and consumption and encouraged ever more extensive mobility. Globalization has helped free more than a billion people from extreme poverty. At the same time, the industrialization of the former “Third World” and the expansive lifestyle of the growing global middle class have led to a dramatic increase in energy consumption. About half of the fossil energy ever consumed since the beginning of industrialization was burned in the last 30 years.

Historically speaking, the pioneers of industrial modernity—Europe and the United States—are responsible for the lion’s share of the rising carbon-dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere. The populous new industrial nations of Asia have started to overtake them. China now accounts for around 28 percent of global CO2 emissions, with India ranking third after the US.

Germany is the only country among the six largest climate sinners whose CO2 emissions have remained roughly the same during this period. Compared to the base year 1990, they have even fallen by around 30 percent. Germany’s share of global economic output is about 3.2 percent, its share of greenhouse gas emissions 2 percent. Nevertheless, per capita CO2 emissions in Germany are above the European average. This is mainly due to the high share of coal in the energy mix. Sweden, with its combination of hydropower and nuclear energy, only emits half as much per capita.

Over the last 200 years, the average global temperature has risen by 1.1 degrees and the trend is a steep upward one. The Arctic waters are ice-free this summer, the melting of Greenland’s ice has reached dramatic proportions, and we have one hot summer after another. We have to fear for the living conditions on our home planet.

It’s Hard to Change

Now that the burning of coal, oil, and gas is throwing the earth’s climate out of whack, the hedonism of modernity is also being criticized. In affluent countries—especially in Germany—there’s a growing movement calling for a radical change in individual lifestyles. The joy of driving a car, the flight abroad for vacations, the large apartment, the permanent online communication, the annually changing fashions, the availability of food from all over the world regardless of season, and the high consumption of meat are regarded as ecological sins. For the followers of a new eco-puritanism, our quest for “more and more” is ruining the planet. “Repent and turn back” is therefore the new categorical imperative.

So far, however, the effect of all these sermons of penance has been very limited. Admittedly, the consumption of meat among the young and educated is decreasing, as is the urge to own a car. But at the same time, the registration figures for SUVs are increasing as is the power consumption of digital communications—and there’s no sign of a slump in the tourism industry. The number of those who have drastically reduced their personal carbon footprint remains modest.

This is not only due to the power of old habits and individual comfort. Our personal carbon footprint depends heavily on structures that individuals can only change to a very limited extent: the way we generate energy; the buildings in which we live; the alternatives available to the automobile; and the professions in which we work. For business people, scientists, members of the international cultural scene, politicians, and the elites of global civil society, flying is not a question of individual morality but rather of everyday professional life. Even where it would be sensible and reasonable to take the train instead of the plane, a lack of capacity and time-consuming connections all too often get in the way.

Just so there’s no misunderstanding: there is no freedom without personal responsibility. It is good and right to ride a bike or take a train, and not to buy products for which people are maltreated or animals suffer. Everyone is free to seek the “good life” that comes from having more free time and social relationships rather than from an increase in income and consumption. But a sober look at the magnitude of the environmental challenge shows that it cannot be solved by appealing to frugality. We will not win the race against climate change without a green industrial revolution, one that decouples wealth production and nature consumption. This is ambitious, but it’s also possible.

The Authoritarian Temptation

The criticism of the slowness of democracy, of its eternal compromises, has a long tradition. In light of the alarming information about melting Arctic glaciers, burning forests and thawing permafrost soils, the calls to take drastic measures here and now are getting louder. For some, democracy is becoming a luxury that we can no longer afford; ecological necessity demands the restriction of freedom.

To argue against this authoritarian temptation doesn’t mean playing down the ecological crisis. If global warming gets out of control and heats up the seas beyond their tipping point, humanity will be facing great upheavals, from economic collapses to global migration. In this respect, the environmental crisis also threatens democracy. We must therefore do everything we can to press ahead with the ecological transformation of industrial society and prevent the climate crisis from destroying liberal democracy.

The ecology of renunciation is based on a static view of the relationship between man and nature. It understands the earth as a fixed space that offers only a limited potential of resources in which humans must settle. If humans exceed the limits set by nature, the species risks self-destruction. An early proponent of this thinking was the British theologian and economist Thomas Malthus (1749-1832). With his famous “population theory,” he came to the conclusion that the earth can only feed about one billion people. Crossing this threshold would lead to catastrophic famines and the collapse of human civilization.

Malthus, however, couldn’t foresee the enormous increase in agricultural productivity through chemical fertilizers, pesticides, modern machinery, and the breeding of higher-yielding plants and livestock. Today, more than seven billion people live on earth, their life expectancy has doubled since then, and the amount of calories available per capita has increased by more than 50 percent. A miracle? Yes, but a miracle based on science and technology. What Malthus did not take into account was human ingenuity.

We cannot override the laws of nature. But technical progress make it possible to push the “natural boundaries” further and further. The “limits of growth” are not fixed. Solar power offers an almost inexhaustible source of energy for an ecological industrial society, one based on the combination of natural and technical photosynthesis, bio-economy, and hydrogen.

Voluntarily going without this and that will at best slow climate change down, but not stop it. This is particularly true in view of the billions of people on our planet who want nothing more than access to a modern life: well-equipped homes, education and professional health care, the opportunity to travel, a rich diet. For the vast majority of the world’s population, “zero growth” is not an alternative. For them, economic growth is still the key to higher living standards, better education, and better health care.

Green Industrial Revolution

The ecological renewal of industry, our cities, and public infrastructure requires increasing investment in alternative energy systems and new production facilities, the expansion of public transport, and the ecological modernization of existing buildings. If we do it right, we will create a new economic dynamic—a long wave of environmentally friendly growth in the global economy.

Rationally speaking, the question is not whether the global economy will continue to grow. With the world’s population rising to ten billion, the countries of the South becoming increasingly industrialized, and cities continuing to grow, the key question is whether we can decouple value creation from environmental pollution. At an annual growth rate of three percent, global economic output will roughly double in the next 20 years. Over the same period, greenhouse gas emissions will have to fall dramatically in order to keep the rise in temperature in check.

This requires nothing less than a green industrial revolution with an impact similar to the invention of the steam engine, electrification, or the triumph of the automobile. In essence, it is about a threefold transformation of the old industrial society: first, from fossil energy sources to renewable energies; second, a continuous increase in resource efficiency (generating more wealth from fewer raw materials and energy); and third, the transition to a modern circular economy in which every residual material is returned to biological or industrial production.

Prices Must Tell the Ecological Truth

A market economy only works if prices tell the ecological truth. An ecological tax reform that gradually makes greenhouse gas emissions and the consumption of scarce natural resources more expensive would have a far greater effect than more and more new bans. The additional burdens arising from environmental taxes can be refunded to all citizens in the form of a flat-rate eco-bonus. This would even have a socially redistributive effect because low-wage earners generally have a smaller CO2 footprint than the wealthy.

A successively rising CO2 price would unleash measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that can achieve the most favorable cost-benefit ratio. The second major advantage over state-controlled production and consumption is that it steers the initiative of companies and consumers in a sustainable direction without prescribing exactly what they should or should not do. At the same time, it provides incentives for producers and consumers to make environmentally friendly investments and purchases.

However, it is not a silver bullet. A CO2 price that adequately reflects the costs of climate change would have to be so high that it could only be implemented gradually. Climate economists say a carbon price could start at around €60 per ton, before being increased to a three-digit figure. In Sweden, which introduced a national CO2 tax back at the beginning of the 1990s, the price is currently €115 per ton. It applies to economic activities that are not covered by European CO2 emissions trading, and companies competing internationally pay lower rates.

Germany, Be a Pioneer

The Paris Climate Conference of 2015 didn’t prove to be the major breakthrough that many had hoped for. Global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, with most countries lagging behind their declarations of intent. The inertia of politics and business, and everyday habits are slowing progress. The conflicts of interest between economy and ecology cannot be overcome overnight. CO2-intensive industries are resisting the devaluation of their capital. Many developing countries continue to rely on coal to sate their hunger for energy. In key countries such as the US and Brazil, a climate policy rollback is underway. The Russian leadership is focusing on increasing oil, gas, and coal exports. CO2 emissions also continue to rise in China despite the impressive expansion of renewable energies and electric mobility.

Despite all the warnings that we are on the brink of catastrophe, economic growth is prioritized over climate protection everywhere in the world, even though the predominant, resource-guzzling and fossil energy-fired growth model destroys more wealth than it creates if its ecological effects are taken into account.

The only real chance of stopping climate change lies in a new model for economic prosperity and social progress: a shift from overexploitation of nature to cooperation with nature, from fossil fuels to renewable energies, from waste of resources to networked cycles, from old-style industrial agricultural to high-tech eco-agriculture. Highly industrialized countries should lead the way.

In many countries today, solar and wind energy are cheaper than new coal and nuclear power plants. Countries like Germany should also play a pioneering role in electricity storage and intelligent grids, hydrogen technology, electromobility, and environmentally friendly chemistry. This would enable us to make an effective contribution to steering the economic catch-up of Asia and Africa in a sustainable direction. If we show that climate protection and economic success are two sides of the same coin, Europe can become a model for others. And, at the same time, we would secure our own economic future.

The post A Green Industrial Revolution appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Third-year geology student Luisa Neubauer is often referred to as “the German Greta,” after the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, the frontperson of the global Friday school strikes who has risen to international fame. But Neubauer, the face of Germany’s Fridays For Future protests, is an original—a wily strategist and practiced activist behind the well-informed, revved-up young people who are calling out the country’s  political class for failing to address climate change.

Within a few short months, Neubauer and her cohorts have motivated hundreds of thousands of people to join the campaign and have reframed the debate in Germany. It’s something that neither activists nor think tanks, scientists nor Green Party politicos had managed to do. By putting themselves at the center of it, the youngsters have linked the present and the future of the climate change conundrum in a cogent narrative. The issue is no longer one of distant people and the distant future, but rather it’s about them, the youngest generation, which demands a response to “the climate crisis,” terminology they’ve introduced, with credible strategies to secure their future.

Neubauer conveys this urgency wherever she goes, and this year she’s already had audiences with the French president, EU commissioners, and German cabinet ministers. “The politicians have to act, now,” she recently told German public radio, underscoring that the movement’s focus has expanded from the shutting down of coal-fired power plants to the big-ticket challenge of designing a sustainable world. “We have to ask ourselves how we want to organize the economy and live and work without wrecking the planet,” she says.

Overnight Media Sensation

Almost overnight, Neubauer, a Hamburg native, has gone from being a virtual unknown to a media sensation, her words and picture splashed across the German press and blogosphere.

At the demonstrations, it’s plain that she resonates with many of her generation (especially those much like her—an important caveat.) She doesn’t outwardly appear particularly hip, much less radical. Her usual demonstration attire is jeans, a royal-blue woolen jacket, and her signature charcoal-gray winter hat with fat pompom. “She looks normal even though she’s quite extraordinary. This is why so many people can relate to her,” says Insa Vries, an activist from Ende Gelände (Here and No Farther), a climate group that embraces civil disobedience.

Neubauer’s cell phone is her communications hub, from which she helps manage the social media accounts that are the global movement’s sole means of coordination. The branches in 120 countries link up and spread their message via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. That’s how on March 15, the Global Climate Strike amassed 1.6 million protesters worldwide—the largest student-centered demonstration ever. In Germany alone, some 300,000 young people skipped school to demonstrate in more than 150 German towns and cities.

One sees at once that Neubauer is no novice. On stage with micro in hand before a throng armed with placards and banners, she is truly in her element. On March 29, the Friday demo at the Brandenburg Gate in downtown Berlin mobilized an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 people. Although the main attraction was Greta Thunberg, who arrived from Sweden and spoke briefly, Neubauer was omnipresent: negotiating Greta through the crowd, leading the chants, introducing speakers, and periodically delivering bursts of oratory: “We’re the generation that can change this climate chaos! We’re more global and networked than the generation before us!”

Perhaps this is simply Neubauer’s 15 minutes of fame, and her novelty will wear off quickly. But at the moment the German media can’t get enough of the speed-talking young woman who takes on the talk shows’ usual suspects with a poise and self-confidence beyond her years.

On the receiving end recently was Ulf Poschardt, editor-in-chief of the conservative Die Welt news group, who appeared alongside her on the talk show Hart aber Fair. Poschardt, 52-years old and usually unflappable, obviously hadn’t done his homework. He blanched when she jumped on his lament that e-cars don’t have enough “soul” for his liking. “Excuse me,” she interjected, “but you obviously have no idea that we’re in a climate crisis! The planet can only take so much carbon dioxide, that’s why we have carbon budgets that we have to stick to,” she said. “And if you want to say that it’s all no good because of your emotional relationship to your sports car or because [e-cars] lack soul, then I have to say, sorry, we really don’t have time for this anymore.”

Pulling the Emergency Brake

In a discussion with Peter Altmaier, Germany’s minister of economics and energy, which was published in full in the weekly Der Spiegel, Neubauer unloaded on the minister when he suggested that rather than skipping school, the students should demonstrate on weekends. In school, he said, students learn how to become full-fledged citizens. Neubauer shot back: “That’s a big misunderstanding: We’re not taking to the streets because we want to change something later as adults, but rather because decision-makers like you need to take action now. We’re pulling the emergency brake because we’re thinking beyond the next exam.”

“The young people, like Luisa, they have the facts right and they wield them very effectively,” says Volker Quaschning, a professor of renewable energy systems at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin and founder of Scientists for Future, a group of 26,000 natural scientists supporting the movement. The student activists, he says, scoured the Internet to find and read the scientific studies that explain global warming and the potential of renewable energy. “They can show up the politicians and pundits because they haven’t read them,” he says.

“The kids are saying what we’ve been saying for 20 or 30 years. But they’re getting a hearing right now that we never got,” says Quaschning. “We’ve been telling the politicians exactly this for years, and they brushed us off. But the young people, they’re honest, innocent in a way, and speak straight to the problems, which they didn’t create but will have to pay for. They have a credibility that we older people don’t have because we’re part of the problem.”

Building an International Movement

The first few school strikes in Germany, in Berlin, the port city of Kiel, and elsewhere broke out last November, inspired by Thunberg, who had plunked herself on the steps of Sweden’s parliament, the Riksdag, with a cardboard sign reading “School strike for climate.” Luisa and Greta first crossed paths in early December 2018, at the UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, and agreed to work together, across borders.

Neubauer, despite her age, was no stranger to grassroots organizing. She had worked in a wide range of campaigns with organizations such as 350.org, ONE, Young Friends of the Earth, Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations, Fossil Free Germany, and the German Green Party’s youth wing, among others. As a child, she had marched for environmental causes alongside her grandmother, a veteran of the 1970s environmental movements which gave rise to the Green Party. As high school student, she took on plastic waste and fracking. At her college, Göttingen University in central Germany, where her scholarly focus is sustainable businesses, she was among the activists who forced the administration to divest from all of its holdings in gas, coal, and oil.

But in Katowice, and talking with Greta, she realized that weekly school strikes were the way forward: civil disobedience would finally catch the establishment’s attention. Four weeks later there were 10,000 kids chanting in front of the Ministry of Economy and Energy in Berlin, with Luisa leading the chant: “Wir sind hier, wir sind laut, weil ihr unsere Zukunft klaut!” (We are here, we are loud, because you’re robbing us of our future!”)

Hailstorm of Flak

While Chancellor Angela Merkel has paid the young activists gentle praise, saying she is supportive of their aims, Neubauer quipped that the compliment only shows how out of touch the chancellor is: “Well, it’s nice that they praise our commitment. [But] we go out on the streets to demand that [the government] take a hold of climate policy and drive forward real climate policy.” If Merkel is serious, said Neubauer, “she should meet her own self-imposed goals.”

In stark contrast to Merkel’s faint praise, Neubauer, Thunberg, and many others in the movement have had to endure a hailstorm of flak, some of it quite nasty. The teacher’s union, among many others, object to the truancy while the leader of the Free Democrats, Christian Lindner, suggested they leave politics to the professionals.  The right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), has gone even further. The party, which calls climate change a sham, ridicules the whole campaign as one of privileged, supremely politically correct children of upper-middle-class Green Party voters.  The response of the hard right, though, is another story. Neubauer’s lifestyle has come under heavy fire, foremost her international travel. Far-right trolls posted a doctored video on YouTube, drawing in part on her Instagram account, which shows her in places as far away as Africa, North America, and Asia and using the hashtag “#LangstreckenLuisa,” or “Long-distanceLuisa.” An Instagram image of a hand, presumably hers, holding a plastic cup of ice cream with plastic spoon stuck in it, reveals her brazen hypocrisy, these critics imply. Most of the flak comes from men, with some using misogynist insults, such as: “Little blondie should stop taking those long-distance flights and go work on an organic farm.”

The question that just about everyone asks Luisa Neubauer is when the school strikes will end. Neubauer says they‘ll return to school when Germany agrees to exit coal in 2030—rather than 2036, as planned. It is, however, virtually unthinkable that Germany’s coal commission will reconvene and renegotiate the exit date that it set just months ago. If they don’t, says, Neubauer, then they’ll strike until 2030—that’s 813 Fridays from now.

While it’s unlikely the movement can sustain its current levels of energy and enthusiasm for that long, in truth it has only just begun, and Luisa and her allies obviously have no shortage of creativity. And already they’ve shifted the debate by underscoring climate change’s existential threat. “We’re bringing the topic of climate change to the dinner tables and the classrooms and the town halls,” says Luisa. “This is certainly a success in itself.”

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