Our Favorite Planet
Imagine if President Bush announced a plan for Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs that declared: They will cease accumulating nuclear weapons by 2025. We will accomplish this through incentives and voluntary action, without mandates.
Mr. Bush would be ridiculed, but in essence, that’s the plan he announced for climate change on Wednesday. He set a target for halting the growth in carbon dioxide emissions by 2025, without specific mandates to achieve that, and in the meantime he blasted proposed Senate legislation for tougher measures as unnecessary.
Unnecessary? When scientists detect accelerating melting in the Arctic and confidently predict centuries of coastal retreats and climate shifts, endangering the only planet we have?
Now let me pause for a special request: If you’re a skeptic about climate change, stop reading here.
That’s because the skeptics have mostly made silly arguments — that climate change is a “hoax” — when there is a much better argument available for them: that the remedies favored by environmentalists, like a cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions, probably won’t do the job.
Three respected climate experts made that troubling argument in an important essay in Nature this month, offering a sobering warning that the climate problem is much bigger than anticipated. That’s largely because of increased use of coal in booming Asian economies.
For example, imagine that we instituted a brutally high gas tax that reduced emissions from American vehicles by 25 percent. That would be a stunning achievement — and in just nine months, China’s increased emissions would have more than made up the difference.
China and the United States each produces more than one-fifth of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. China’s emissions are much smaller per capita but are soaring: its annual increase in emissions is greater than Germany’s total annual emissions.
“We’ve gotten this hopelessly wrong,” said Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado at Boulder, one of the authors of the Nature article. “If we approach this from reducing emissions we get nowhere. Driving Priuses may be good, but it’s not going to accomplish what we need.”
Mr. Pielke and his colleagues argue that the best hope for salvation will be investment in new technologies — and that’s why I asked the climate deniers not to read this column, for it can sound a bit like President Bush’s “solution.”
The difference is that Mr. Bush has used modest investments in hydrogen as a substitute for immediate action, while what we need is vast investments on top of a drive to curb emissions through a carbon tax and a cap-and-trade system. In the best of worlds, it will be enormously difficult to persuade China and India to rely less on coal-fired power plants, and it will be utterly impossible unless we take serious steps ourselves.
“The message is, let’s change light bulbs and let’s be more efficient,” Mr. Pielke said. “But let’s do more than that. The solution lies in transformational technologies.”
Solar power is one of the most hopeful technologies but still produces about 0.01 percent of U.S. electricity. The U.S. allocates just $159 million for solar research per year — about what we spend in Iraq every nine hours.
Other renewable technologies, including wind power, also merit far more investment; it’s appalling that subsidies continue to support oil and coal, and that money should be diverted to renewables. Since 1979, U.S. spending on energy research has shrunk by approximately half, taking inflation into account. Spending on military research, meanwhile, has more than doubled and now amounts to roughly 20 times what is spent on energy research.
Then there is geo-engineering, or tinkering with our planet to overcome our past tinkering. One proposal is to inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to mimic the effects of volcanic eruptions in cooling the planet. Another is to fertilize the sea with iron particles to encourage the growth of plants that would suck in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Then there are more bizarre proposals for giant sunshades to orbit the earth, or for space-based solar panels.
So the next president should start a $20 billion-a-year program (financed by a pullout from Iraq) to develop new energy technologies, backed by a carbon tax and cap-and-trade system. Each of the presidential candidates favors some form of a cap-and-trade and would mark a step forward from President Bush’s passivity — although John McCain’s recent proposal for a summer holiday from the gas tax would be a deplorable step in exactly the wrong direction, unless he hopes to turn his land in Arizona into coastal property.
The bottom line is that none of the candidates focus adequately on climate change, for this will be one of humanity’s great tests in the coming decades — and so far we’re failing.
Nicholas D. Kristof is a regular New York Times columnist.
© 2008 The New York Times
The climate naysayers–people who proudly but wrongly consider themselves conservatives–have constantly harped on the uncertainty of the science without apparently a clue that this uncertainty could cut both ways.
We’ve failed at many tasks. The thing is one of our failures may well kill us…
Population growth is the ultimate problem behind global warming and other environmental challenges. The sooner we confront that problem, the better. Otherwise our descendants are going to be busy killing each other, or just dying of the environmental degradation. If it turns out there is a technological solution, we can resume our population growth later.
This article, perhaps reflecting the views expressed in the Nature essay by Pielke et al, implies a false dichotomy between reducing emissions versus implementing “transformational technologies”.
The bottom line is that we MUST reduce emissions if we are to have any hope of avoiding the most catastrophic impacts of anthropogenic global warming. (It is already too late to avoid severe impacts, which are in fact already occurring and will inevitably continue as the result of warming that has already occurred.)
Implementing “transformational” zero-carbon energy technologies, principally solar and wind generated electricity, is one way of reducing emissions. And there is no question about it — both solar and wind are transformational technologies that have the potential to bring revolutionary changes to the way electricity is generated, distributed and used, much as the personal computer, the Internet and cell phones revolutionized “data processing” and “telecommunications”.
But more efficient use of existing energy sources is also crucial to reducing emissions — including more efficient use of fossil fuels, during the period that we are phasing them out completely. And so is the redesign of our agricultural system, moving from fossil-fuel intensive “factory” farming and long-distance transportation of a heavily meat-centric food supply, to local organic production of a mostly plant-based food supply for local consumption. And so is the redesign of our cities, towns and suburbs to minimize the need for energy-intensive automobile use. And so is the design of highly efficient, energy-producing buildings that generate onsite, or capture through passive solar design, most if not all of the energy needed for heating and cooling.
In my experience, some people who alternate between so-called “skepticism” (actually denial) of the reality of global warming and pushing the false dichotomy of “new technology” versus reducing emissions, seem primarily concerned that nothing be done to actively reduce the consumption of fossil fuels: no mandates, no regulation, no carbon taxes — just invest in “new technology” and let “the market” take care of it. Which is, of course, the agenda of the fossil fuel corporations and their bought-and-paid-for shills in the White House, Dick Cheney and George Bush — to contine reaping trillions of dollars in profit from fossil fuel use until the last drop of oil and the last crumb of coal has been burned.
With regard to the various speculative, untested and risky “geo-engineering” proposals for reducing warming, it is true that even the current anthropogenically-increased CO2 concentrations are dangerous and need to be reduced. But as Australian scientist Tim Flannery has pointed out, the most effective way to do this is to work with nature through a massive global program of reforestation and organic agriculture techniques that draw excess CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it in soils and forests (thereby improving the health of the biosphere as well as reducing atmospheric CO2 levels). There is no need for deploying giant mirrors in space or for risky tinkering with chemistry the atmosphere or oceans.
Mr. Kristof is rightly concerned and I’m grateful that he’s using the public platform of his New York Times column to bring public attention to this issue. But I would encourage him to look deeper at the paths to a solution, and reject industry-framed false dichotomies and frivolous notions about geo-engineering.
From that bastion of secularism, the Pentagon (January, 2004):
“Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver
Or maybe it is left wing establismnt, The World Bank (again, from the beginnings of 2004):
“World Bank, Pentagon: global warming red alert
Weather of mass destruction bigger threat than terrorism”
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/world-bank-pentagon-warn-cli
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver
Sorry ’bout the repetition above. Was unintentional.
We will reduce our emissions…
When the resources we need to maintain this ridiculous travesty of Western civilization run out.
But not before then.
Not if the corporations can help it…
Spiny Norman - you say population is the problem? Are you willing to volunteer yourself or simply invoke the same population control measures of ages past from Remeses, Stalin, Hitler, or do you think its a brand new theory from Anglican Priests…aka Fr. Malthus?
The solution to overpopulation is to take a clue from Italy circa 1960. Deeply conservative, quite poor, Italy’s birth rate was the highest in Europe. No good social security safety net and no jobs for women in a traditional society that was still highly landed and crony corporatist, and definitely reserved for men. In such an environment (still prevalent in most of the developing world) women have ONE chance at social standing and comfort in their declining years: have 8 kids and hope one of your dozens of grandchildren does well enough to support you. Italy managed to change to provide jobs for women and a social safety net, and italian women responded so that by today Italy has the lowest birth rate in Europe, despite still being highly Catholic.
Spiny Norman, I see brontoburger (apparently named for a time when cavemen walked with the dinosaurs and made burgers out of brontosaurs, didn’t they just now; and who ignores the reality of a finite earth) has posed a nonsensical, nasty, false-logic false-choice question to you that you can just dismiss as the rubbish it is.
The brontoburger asks you why you don’t just go and kill yourself for suggesting that population control may be a good idea now. How thoughtful, how insightful. Then bronto equates population control with Stalin and Hitler, by implication saying the actions of these dictators are what population contol means (actually, both had policies of more production of state children, as future soldiers for their dictatorships, so the dictators are on brontoburger’s side).
Brontoburger’s thinking is retarded and irrational. See the YouTube video, ARE HUMANS SMARTER THAN YEAST? and realize that brontoburger is, sadly, not smarter than yeast.
WIthout population control, there will be an exponential growth of the human population. You may be able to feed 7 billion people today, barely maybe and without quality of life, but what about the 37 billion people this could grow to in forty years, or how about the 187 billion this could grow to in only one hundred years, just one long lifetime. And this number will be at a time when all the oil and coal will be gone. See Olduvai Theory at www.dieoff.com. See the book THE LONG EMERGENCY.
Population control is about rationally realizing the limits that nature has in its global life support systems. It is about trying to achieve a good and decent and happy life for every human being on Earth, without destruction of the very ecological systems necessary to maintain life at all (witness Haiti). And we must face this and do this in a rational way.
The brontoburger way leads directly to the mandatory alternative ways of control: resource wars, epdemic diseases, mass starvation, environmemtal destruction, the mass of humanity living short brutal unfulfilling lives, and finally ecologic catastrophe that will kill billions, if not wipe out all life on Earth. See www.planetextinction.com.
That is the REAL choice. Rational planning and world-wide co-operation. Or the brontoburger way of ‘riding to hell in a handbasket and just letting the devil sort it all out.’
Spiny Norman, you are the advocate for all life on Earth. Brontoburger, you and your kind of narrow, severely limited thinking are actually the antagonists that work against all life on Earth with your views. Realize it.
Ok the biggest fault of the world is America. What are you people going to do about it?????????
I know have an election, 300 million sheep you deserve what ever happens because you didn’t do anything to stop it
Watched On The Beach today on TV. In a way Bush would like that movie the last Pres of america if cockroaches could only read Bush
The solution currently being implemented is the head in sand and do nothing solution, also known as the exploitation business as usual. The only longer term hope of surviving the current bout of planetary depredations is that conditions for food, water, sanitation, war on the planet may soon become so severe that a large percentage of the human population is due to die off, in horrible circumstances that equivalent to the visions of the biblical new testament revelations. It is an admission of failure that the chief exploiters cannot be relied on to control themselves. It is a stark choice, we dismember the fossil fuel lifestyle now, or we become extinction fodder later.
But who wants to give up their cushy carbon lifestyles now and go and live without electricity? Their are not enough alternative energy sources being exploited now to power one percent of our unsustainable lifestyle. When are the remaining workers going on permanent strike to bring down the official economy? The unions are still about jobs, pay and conditions, to share the fruits of exploitation. No one is really about to give up their way of life, or aspiration to it. It follows that the politicians are going to do nothing, or worse, intensely carry on carboning. They are not seeking to reduce emissions. The carbon credits trading schemes are worst than a scam. They are preventing the necessary steps to dismantle the carbon energy lifestyle in the biggest consumer nations, and increasing it in the big aspirational nations of China and India. We are hooked and deluded into status and lifestyle acquisition.
Carbon trading schemes will result in massively increased carbon debts for those schemes on the books, and those off the books will not be counted. If the methodology and results of the current financial markets have any indication at all about likely global unregulated behavior, the results of carbon credit scams will be a dissociated financial failure, with rise in debts equal to rise in greenhouse gases. We will only know the schemes are working if the coal, oil and carbon companies are loudly squealing, and so far they are helping write, oversee and bend the rules. Capitalism is designed exclusively for and by the exploiters. If a corporation tries to do some public good, it fears it will be taken over, or over taken, by a more ruthless competitor. When the governments start being revolutionary and become ruthless to all corporations and financial fraudsters, then we might start to think the governments are getting serious. Until then, its all corporate window dressing.
Thanks, ubrew12 for pointing out that “population control” is unneeded if women have control over their lives.
People frequently make the mistake of equating government control over reproduction (population control) with personal control (birth control). Of course, they are polar opposites.
Government sterilization, like government outlawing of abortion or birth control, is meddling in people’s private lives. Very few people would choose to have too many children, if they had the power.
On the original article - why is it that “tinkering with our planet” is taken seriously as a solution, whereas conservation and alternative energy is derided as unfeasible?
I just wrote a letter to my electric coop and (posted a copy on my blog) about this very subject. They want to build coal power plants and pipe the carbon dioxide 500 miles and pump it under the ground. They are willing to spend billions for this. But insulating houses and wind and solar and geothermal energy? Not a cent. That’s “impractical”.
Who makes up this reality? The corporations that own this country.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2008/04/feasible-energy-and-pipe-dream-energy.html
“…and so far we’re failing.”
Key word: WE.
As in, WE do not need the government to “lead” on climate change. WE know the score, and WE have a choice - alter our “lifestyles” accordingly, or suffer. Period.
Imagine if WE took the initiative, if WE were self-motivated, if WE did what we knew we had to do…
People, get it through your heads already: fascism is corporate governance against the will of We The People. No government, anywhere, ever is going to help “us.” Either we give them the finger and start living “xtreme green” on our own, or a huge percentage of us are doomed.
Easy on the overpopulation talk. Sure, if everybody ate beef for every meal like Americans, we couldn’t feed anybody. But instead of advocating once again for a vegetarian diet, I simply refer to a nice moderation on the topic posted on this site before …
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/29/6704/
Like he says in the article above, to blame overpopulation by itself is to blame the poor for the excesses of the rich. I refuse to do that. The primary problem is the economic strangulation of the many by the few.
Breeding is unconscionable in today’s world.
Breeding without thinking of the real consequences, and the greed of the rich, are both factors in our huge problem. Both need to be dealt with, among many other things.
Regarding the complaint that government control over reproduction is bad because it is meddling in private lives, and reproductive freedom is all we need to reign in population: that’s going to take too long, or most likely will never happen. I’m afraid it’s getting to the point, or already gotten to the point, where some rules that people don’t like are going to have to be laid down, and laid down hard. That will happen in one form or another in multiple ways anyway, and we will perceive most of them as intrusions upon our freedom.
But there will likely be no significant attempt at organized, rational, planned population abatement. The disaster we are heading to is too complex, and people are too selfish.
off22 said: “Easy on the overpopulation talk. Sure, if everybody ate beef for every meal like Americans, we couldn’t feed anybody.”
Yes. Overpopulation is often equated with unsustainable development, but they needn’t go hand in hand. You are absolutely right about a vegetarian diet. I can’t imagine that people are thinking of ‘Auchwitz’-type solutions, or forcing women to have only one baby at gunpoint, just so they can slaughter the same number of cattle that they are used to eating each year.
People, if you gave every family of four a typical American home, everyone in the world would fit in the state of Texas. Thats a fact. I also believe the world is overpopulated, but if we think the solutions to that are going to come from ‘hands-off no-regulations’ conservatives, we’ve got another think coming. We best act now, with an eye to justice, before circumstances degrade to the point where meatless and/or concentration-camp existences rear as the only way out.
Over the past two years, the price of oil has doubled, yet demand has not dropped and may still be growing in the U.S. That should tell us something about the size of a carbon tax that would be necessary to reduce energy consumption by 7% or more (compounded) to reach the most recent emission reduction goals advocated by leading climatologists as the bare minimum to have a hope of avoiding a catastrophe. We need taxes on carbon to more than equal the amount we are spending on energy (about $300 billion) and double each year. Very quickly, the amount of the necessary carbon tax will be in excess of the total amount of taxes the government presently takes in, yet even the leading advocates of carbon taxes are resigning themselves to a “revenue neutral” tax, which means it cannot exceed current tax revenues. That is a dead end, even if the pols could muster the will to set a $400+ billion carbon tax.
A cap and trade system is just too easy to game and to use as further exploitation of poor struggling companies rather than cleaning up our own act.
So, yes, a market based system, whether or not it is mandatory, seems inadequate. If we are going to do this in the available amount of time, we need to come together, take charge, and regulate our corporate overlords before they make their last buck killing us off. Is it just me or does it seem that there are precious few “leaders” left who even remember what it was like to occasionally insist on maintaining the upper hand with the banking and industrial interests for the common good?
Best wishes, all.
Does “The Market” factor in the inevitability of exhaustion of finite resources? Does the market have a built in survival instinct ala life on earth? I hope that humans can rely on the magic of the marketplace to solve these problems and/or the power of denial to eliminate them. Otherwise heed the advice of e e cummings “There is a hell of a universe next door; Let’s go”
spiny norman thanks for speaking the truth about overpopulation and the destruction of the life forms on this planet it should be the number one subject but it is now off limits in so many ways now .