Oxford professor Steve Rayner is co-author of one of the best recent papers on climate policy Kyoto Wrong Trousers: Radically Rethinking Climate Policy. Steve nails the key policy issues in a short “letter to the president” in the latest Wired:
Mr. President:
The outgoing administration failed to come to grips with climate change out of fear that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would damage the economy. But the decision to deal with climate change doesn’t lend itself to cost-benefit analysis. It is a strategic choice, like the decision to get married. You have an opportunity to define the nation’s character and upgrade its infrastructure — and bold action would be consistent with America’s historical role as a leader in innovation. It would also encourage India and China to participate in the effort. Here are a few points to keep in mind.
Cap and trade won’t work. The market for carbon offsets is widely touted as the best way to curb greenhouse gases. This would be fine if time were unlimited. However, the best available science suggests that we need to stabilize emissions by mid-century. That’s too soon for carbon prices to rise enough to drive the R&D necessary to enable cleaner alternatives to compete with fossil fuels. It doesn’t help that the cap-and-trade approach relies on underdeveloped monitoring and accounting systems that inevitably leave plenty of wiggle room for unscrupulous speculators to work the system, amassing fortunes while achieving nothing for the atmosphere.
New technology is critical.The only plausible way to curb emissions in the next few decades is to accelerate the development and adoption of low-carbon energy sources. Rather than setting targets for greenhouse gases, we should establish goals for installed technology, beginning with the most energy-intensive sectors, like electricity generation, ground transportation, and cement manufacturing. Similarly, international cooperation on emissions reduction should focus on the handful of countries responsible for the lion’s share of the problem. In the US and elsewhere, R&D funding should be directed toward technologies that otherwise might not come online for up to 20 years. This would fill the gap between the turnaround timeline for venture capital (three to five years) and for basic research (beyond 20 years).
Let the market decide. No amount of public investment will succeed if politicians are allowed to pick the winners. The program must be designed to widen the choices available to the market, not to preempt them. There is no silver bullet, but we can develop silver buckshot. The point is to ensure that money flows to a variety of options from which the market can select, not just the one that’s being developed in the district of a powerful member of Congress.
The Big Polluters: Just five countries are responsible for 56 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Efforts to roll back climate change should focus on these nations.
Mr. President, this strategy is not just about throwing money at the problem. It will be necessary to review a wide range of policies that affect technology development and deployment, including intellectual property, defense procurement, taxation, and performance standards. Moreover, stabilizing the atmosphere does not address the legacy of past emissions. It is equally important to invest in infrastructure that will head off damage from extreme weather events caused by the climate change we’ve already set in motion.
Twice in the past century, the US dragged its feet before confronting threats to our civilization in the form of two world wars. But when it finally committed itself, it shot straight into the leadership position and dealt decisively with the problems. Climate change poses the same sort of challenge — and opportunity — at the beginning of the present century.
Sincerely,
Steve Rayner
It is high time we started calling cap and trade what it really is — tax and charade.
Roger Pielke examines the upcoming emissions permits auction for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) of 10 northeastern U.S. states participating in this new cap and trade program.
…The evolving performance of RGGI should add weight to the argument that cap and trade is simply not up to the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Roger Pielke offers the Prometheus arena for a debate between and around economist Gary Yohe and Bjorn Lomborg. If you have any interest in assessing the range of policy options, you must allocate some time to read through the comments. And if you haven’t already done so, to read the subject Copenhagen Consensus 2008 Challenge Paper “Global Warming” by Yohe, Tol, and Blanford.
E.g., comment #19 by George Tobin — who seems to agree with my first reaction to reading Yohe’s editorial — that Yohe needed to attack Lomborg, lest he be seen as an “ally”
1) I think in some circles it is obligatory to respond negatively when cited favorably by Bjorn Lomborg. Notwithstanding specific differences regarding the characterization of his economic projections Dr. Yohe probably had to prevent the damaging perception that he might be a tacit ally of one of the world’s most dreaded non-alarmists.
E.g., comment #27 by Richard Tol [a co-author of the subject paper]. I don’t like the Copenhagen Consensus ranking of “government R&D only” at 14th position as the most efficient policy. Richard explains so clearly why a revenue-neutral carbon tax will generate better results than R&D subsidies:
…As to my disagreement with Chris Green, this is about facts, not values. (As far I can tell, Chris and I agree on many value issues.) Green proposes a large scale applied research programme funded by the government. Previous attempts to do that have failed — indeed, the proponents of this approach frequently quote the Manhattan and Apollo projects as their biggest successes. As this experience suggests that the Green proposal would be expensive and ineffective, I would rather not repeat it for climate. This type of research has to be done by companies, not by national laboratories, and companies respond better to taxes than to R&D subsidies.
Chris Green is the author of the challenge paper that was picked by the Copenhagen Consensus panel as #14, whereas the Yohe, Tol, Blanford policy was ranked #29 by the panel.
E.g., comment #28 by TokyoTom — who nails a key source of confusion and controversy
1. It seems to me that Tol and Yohe have a point that Lomborg has confused his readers as to what Yohe and Tol concluded, but fail to focus on the point of confusion - only Roger seems to have caught the drift, but doesn’t identify any responsibility for Lomborg in it.
Lomborg first mentions Yohe as “one of the lead economists of the IPCC” who “For the Copenhagen Consensus … did a survey”. But in concluding what climate policy should be, Lomborg completely ignores the strong recommendation of Yohe and Tol (for a policy that focusses on mitigation, with R&D investments to be primarily market driven and some limited government-funded efforts to aid adaptation in developing countries) for “the best climate solution from the top economists from the Copenhagen Consensus”, without making any effort to clearly distinguish Yohe/Tol from those who voted on the CC ranking.
…But none of these conclusions can be derived from the Yohe/Tol work, and since Lomborg first refers to them, it is a puzzle that he did not do a better job of distinguishing their conclusions from those of the CC voting panel of economists.
FWIW, TokyoTom is a reliable contributor of insights, setting a good example of critical thinking for the rest of us.
I am happy to see a growing number of full life-cyle studies of energy supply alternatives. An outstanding example is this Australian study of the nuclear energy cycle {an input-output-based life-cycle assessment (IO-LCA)} . A just-published study by a Utrecht University team examines the full impact of CCS, i.e., carbon capture and sequestration: Life cycle assessment of a pulverized coal power plant with post-combustion capture, transport and storage of CO2.
For three pulverized coal supply chains, the bottom line is that CO2 emissions are reduced some 71 to 78% while some other emissions like nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides are higher up to 40% higher. The study is not a “CSS is a bad idea” paper, but demonstrates the environmental tradeoffs involved in most energy policy choices.
Life cycle assessment is a seriously complicated undertaking, so this will not be good bedtime reading — the article is not free. The abstract:
In this study the methodology of life cycle assessment has been used to assess the environmental impacts of three pulverized coal fired electricity supply chains with and without carbon capture and storage (CCS) on a cradle to grave basis. The chain with CCS comprises post-combustion CO2 capture with monoethanolamine, compression, transport by pipeline and storage in a geological reservoir. The two reference chains represent sub-critical and state-of-the-art ultra supercritical pulverized coal fired electricity generation. For the three chains we have constructed a detailed greenhouse gas (GHG) balance, and disclosed environmental trade-offs and co-benefits due to CO2 capture, transport and storage. Results show that, due to CCS, the GHG emissions per kWh are reduced substantially to 243 g/kWh. This is a reduction of 78 and 71% compared to the sub-critical and state-of-the-art power plant, respectively. The removal of CO2 is partially offset by increased GHG emissions in up- and downstream processes, to a small extent (0.7 g/kWh) caused by the CCS infrastructure. An environmental co-benefit is expected following from the deeper reduction of hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen chloride emissions. Most notable environmental trade-offs are the increase in human toxicity, ozone layer depletion and fresh water ecotoxicity potential for which the CCS chain is outperformed by both other chains. The state-of-the-art power plant without CCS also shows a better score for the eutrophication, acidification and photochemical oxidation potential despite the deeper reduction of SOx and NOx in the CCS power plant. These reductions are offset by increased emissions in the life cycle due to the energy penalty and a factor five increase in NH3 emissions.
The MIT Future of Coal study concluded that it is critical to fast-track CCS at industrial scale. We need to know how well it works, and what it really costs. By “we” I really mean those making the new plant investment decisions — notably U.S., Chinese, Indian and Brazilian utility executives. It is those decisions that continue to drive new dirty-coal plant startups every week. And if CCS looks uneconomic we will have to drastically rethink our way to a low-carbon economy — making nuclear even more attractive.
Australian scientists have come up with a unique way to combat climate change: eat kangaroos and save the world.
A study claims that farming and consuming more kangaroos instead of cattle and sheep will reduce carbon gas emissions.
According to the scientific journal Conservation Letters, the Australian icon produces far less methane than sheep and cattle. Methane is one of the worst causes of greenhouse gas and in Australia alone sheep and cattle produce 11 per cent of the nation’s total emissions.
Kangaroos, on the other hand, produce relatively small amounts of the gas because they are not ruminants; as with wallabies, the microorganisms in their stomachs differ from those found in sheep and cattle.
…“Currently, farmers have few options to reduce the contribution that livestock make to greenhouse gas production,” Dr Wilson said. “However, low-emission kangaroo meat will provide an option to avoid emissions . . . and have a positive global impact.”
Don’t laugh, this is serious science.
On an issue as high politicized as climate change, where bloggers and others are paying close attention, the inclusion of a doctored image, the cribbing of an old, misleading figure, and the inclusion of an editor’s personal views in the guise of a science assessment is remarkable, even in a draft for public comment. Even if the excuse is plain old sloppiness, the report is a big fat black eye for the world’s leading climate science program.
Read on to discover the who is behind this sloppy report on climate change.
In 2003 Dan Sarewitz and I wrote an article titled “Wanted: Scientific Leadership on Climate” (PDF). In that article we made the following brash assertion:
What happens when the scientific community’s responsibility to society conflicts with its professional self interest? In the case of research related to climate change the answer is clear: Self interest trumps responsibility.
Our argument was that the scientific community sought to take care of its own interests first while “the needs and capabilities of decisionmakers who must deal with climate change have played little part in guiding research priorities.”
If you need any evidence that little has changed in the five years since we wrote that article, have a look at this story by Andy Revkin in today’s New York Times. The article discusses the termination of the Center for Capacity Building at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the nation’s largest government-supported atmospheric (and related) sciences research lab.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research, an important hub for work on the causes and consequences of climate change, has shut down a program focused on strengthening poor countries’ ability to forecast and withstand droughts, floods and other climate-related hazards.
The move, which center officials say resulted from the shrinking of federal science budgets, is being denounced by many experts on environmental risk, who say such research is more crucial than ever in a world with rising populations exposed to climate threats.
In e-mail exchanges, these experts said the eliminated program, the Center for Capacity Building, was unique in its blend of research and training in struggling countries.
The Center for Capacity Building (still online at ccb.ucar.edu) was created in 2004. It built on decades of work by its director, Michael Glantz, a political scientist who has focused on the societal effects of natural climate extremes and any shifts related to accumulating greenhouse gases.
More from Roger Pielke. This is a surprising move by NCAR — cutting one of the few credible research programs on adaptation.
And according to this later post from Roger this is not a simple response to budget cutting. There have NOT been cuts in real federal funding for science - budgets have been more or less flat in real terms. Click on the thumbnail at left for the a chart of the R&D funding.
Al Gore’s speech is the first I am aware of where a prominent politician promotes a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Let us hope this gets a political dialog going. So far all the Washington and OECD talk has been on “cap and trade”, a vastly inferior policy.
Yes I know that Gore is proposing a ten year zero-carbon electricity goal. While I don’t think there is any chance of getting close to that goal, I have two caveats. First, I’m not a politician — it may well be that setting a simple-clear-ambitious but unachievable goal is the way to sell the policy. Second, innovation and entreprenuership can do amazing things — just maybe real progress could be made in ten years.
Daniel Rosenblum has a few comments on the speech:
In a major address yesterday, Al Gore asked his fellow citizens to accept the challenge “for America to be running on 100 percent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years.” The press coverage only hints at the power and importance of the speech. Summarizing or paraphrasing the speech isn’t enough. See and listen to it yourself, or just read it, by clicking here.
If you don’t have the time, here’s my favorite part:
Of course, we could and should speed up this transition by insisting that the price of carbon-based energy include the costs of the environmental damage it causes. I have long supported a sharp reduction in payroll taxes with the difference made up in CO2 taxes. We should tax what we burn, not what we earn. This is the single most important policy change we can make.
Here is Gore’s conclusion:
So I ask you to join with me to call on every candidate, at every level, to accept this challenge - for America to be running on 100 percent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years. It’s time for us to move beyond empty rhetoric. We need to act now.
This is a generational moment. A moment when we decide our own path and our collective fate. I’m asking you - each of you - to join me and build this future. Please join the WE campaign at wecansolveit.org.We need you. And we need you now. We’re committed to changing not just light bulbs, but laws. And laws will only change with leadership.
On July 16, 1969, the United States of America was finally ready to meet President Kennedy’s challenge of landing Americans on the moon. I will never forget standing beside my father a few miles from the launch site, waiting for the giant Saturn 5 rocket to lift Apollo 11 into the sky. I was a young man, 21 years old, who had graduated from college a month before and was enlisting in the United States Army three weeks later.
I will never forget the inspiration of those minutes. The power and the vibration of the giant rocket’s engines shook my entire body. As I watched the rocket rise, slowly at first and then with great speed, the sound was deafening. We craned our necks to follow its path until we were looking straight up into the air. And then four days later, I watched along with hundreds of millions of others around the world as Neil Armstrong took one small step to the surface of the moon and changed the history of the human race.
We must now lift our nation to reach another goal that will change history. Our entire civilization depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind.
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