Green Options

Have you seen the comic art for the 2010 Union of Concerned Scientists Scientific Integrity Cartoons? Shown above is a cartoon about science and the Endangered Species Act.

The entire calendar shows how “the absurdity of political interference in science is ripe for lampooning-and serves as a constant reminder of how vigilant we must be in defending science from politics.” The comics also highlight the need for the new administration and Congress to create a thriving federal scientific enterprise.

Norway committed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2020 this week. This is the most ambitious goal of any rich nation to date.

Norway’s prime minister Jens Stoltenberg (just re-elected) is meeting the requests of many developing nations and environmental NGOs with this commitment.

A new report released today says that if we shift our economy — to a greener, low-carbon economy — we will have more jobs, not fewer.

Earlier this week, Tony Blair (former prime minister of the UK) and the Climate Group reported that if we worked to avoid climate change we’d create 10 million new jobs by 2020 — worldwide. Another recent study by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council says that such a shift could increase employment in the EU by 2.7 million jobs by 2030.

One more report, released today by the Global Climate Network (an alliance of nine influential think tanks) comes to similar conclusions.

There’s one thing I don’t get about how Cap and Trade works. How carbon emissions would still come down, whether the initial allowances were auctioned or free. Most environmentalists are up in arms over “polluting industry getting free allowances” while I don’t object to anything that sweetens the deal. But would it work?

So I contacted Harvard’s Robert N. Stavins to get a very simple concrete example. He has authored much referenced works on environmental policy design and Cap and Trade legislation draws heavily on his work. Here’s his analogy in which TV or video gaming stands in for carbon emissions. First, you set a Cap. The limit will be 4 hours total, with a Cap of one hour max for each child. Here’s how he put it.

“If I put in place a system whereby you have to have an allowance for every hour of video games tonight, it does not matter whether you bought it or got it for free, it still limits you to one hour.  Period.”

He added: “And if you are allowed to trade these allowances with others, you have the same incentives to sell your allowance if you don’t want to play any video games tonight; or to buy more if you want to play more than one hour, regardless of whether you had to buy or got for free the first one.”

Now that Cap and Trade is a possibility, there is a rising clamor for a carbon tax instead, from conservative thinktanks like the American Enterprise Institute, outlets like The Washington Times and even directly from Exxon itself. Yet when first introduced by Al Gore, in 1993, the carbon tax was anathema to the fossil industry. What makes a carbon tax now less of a threat than Cap and Trade? It’s the Cap.

The key difference between Cap and Trade and a carbon tax is that a carbon tax controls just the cost of pollution - only a cap limits the quantity.

The “Cap” limits emissions by fossil companies

The Cap in Cap and Trade is the only mechanism for ensuring a total limit to carbon emissions. A Cap is set for the fossil industries as a whole. The Cap on emissions at point-of-entry sources (oil pipelines, coal fields and coal-fired power stations) in the current Cap and Trade bill limits total carbon.

Climate Action Will Pay for Itself, and More.

The United Nations (UN) stated earlier this month that the cost of avoiding climate change was at least 1% of global GDP — $500-600 billion dollars. Despite this major cost, Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the UK, and The Climate Group, presented a report to the UN yesterday saying that a strong climate deal will “boost growth in all major economies & create millions of new jobs.”

A new survey of Asians finds that they want a strong international climate agreement, and they want a few key world leaders to step up to the plate to make it happen.

181 of the world’s largest investors say that the climate agreement in Copenhagen needs to be strong and binding.

This is from companies managing over $13 trillion and is the largest such statement to date. Their proposals are even stronger than what most activist organizations are asking for.

Australia has passed the US as the new world leader in CO2 emissions per capita. That is not the only climate change problem in Australia, though.

The DOE is headed up by Steven Chu, who has totally revamped the Department of Energy from a fossil friendly enterprise to one that moves us swiftly off of oil and coal and towards more home grown renewable power like solar and wind.

The Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute are oil-funded think-tanks dedicated to turning out academic-appearing reports that have successfully confused Americans about global warming. The result has been that oil companies have successfully delayed renewable energy development in this country.

Like Americans For Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which was behind the firing of Van Jones, the Green Jobs Czar; these organizations are funded by Exxon and David and Charles Koch (Koch Industries oil empire).  Freedom works is currently sponsoring astroturf townhalls to fight energy legislation.

The plot thickens…they now have Steven Chu in their sights.

Successfully transitioning the United States to low‐carbon electricity will require an improved
transmission infrastructure. Cities don’t grow where there’s too much wind. The best solar is far from us in our deserts.

We need to build a supergrid like the national highway system we built in the 1930’s. But a new study finds that this might be almost impossible to do in this country. A historical legacy of Balkanized ownership of multiple tiny grids and ineffective regulatory structure has hindered upgrades to and expansion of the U.S. transmission network.

In these political times of political hysteria against any kind of national common good, it will be hard to overcome a legacy that grew out of our rugged individualism.

By contrast, China and Europe have easily added more renewable power, by socializing the grid.