Good to see an editorial in the NYTimes By Arlie Hochschild and David Hochschild supporting doing something about climate change (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/29/opinion/sunday/republicans-climate-change-polls.html) just as it was good to see “Meet the Press” devote a whole hour to the issue this weekend. I do have difficulties with both presentations as I favor more practical efforts and less policy discussion but then that’s just me.
In the Hochschilds’ editorial I found some points that needed further explanation which may explain why I tend toward the practical rather than the policy:
"The survey also found that majorities in both parties think the government should fund research into solar and wind energy…”
This has been a constant since at least the aftermath of the first energy crisis in 1973 with, usually, about 70% of the public supporting more support for renewables research, something that, to my knowledge, has never and has yet to happen. In fact, I understand that there is a professor at Tufts University who has a long list of policy ideas which are supported by supermajorities of the people that have never been enacted into legislation.
"Two Republican former secretaries of state, George Shultz and James Baker, have called for a gradually increasing carbon tax, with all revenue rebated directly to the American people.”
Jimmy Carter’s energy policy, starting from 1978 through the 1980 election, was 20% of our energy from renewables by the year 2000 and 90% of homes insulated by 1985. The Reagan administration, including George Schultz and James Baker stopped that dead in its tracks. I confronted Schultz about this at MIT a few years ago and he slid away from any criticism by implying that Carter had a goal but no plan.
The Schultz Baker also includes a “border adjustment” for goods imported from countries that don’t have a carbon pricing system, which, perhaps, could be thought of as a sorta kinda VAT? I wonder about that.
The Schultz Baker plan is also connected to former Representative Bob Inglis whose organization, RepublicEn (http://www.republicen.org) promotes “free market solutions” to climate change.
However, "The Baker-Schultz plan also includes a waiver that would let oil companies and other emitters off the hook for past acts contributing to global warming, preempting the many lawsuits filed against them. And it would undo the Clean Power Plan and other federal regulations covering carbon dioxide emissions.” [Source: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-carbon-tax-global-warming-20181012-story.html] This would be a major drawback to acceptance especially since it seems the fossil fool companies KNEW climate change was a direct threat by at least 1980 and 60% of greenhouse gas emissions have occurred since then. I would also guess that if they got this limitation on their liability they would then begin work on having the public pay for their “stranded assets,” the fossil foolishness they have discovered but will not be able to develop.
"The plan starts the tax at $40 per metric ton, but does not specify how or by how much it will rise.”
$40/ton is the “social cost of carbon” the Obama EPA proposed which is good but it would be better if the “social cost of carbon” were replaced by the accurate ecological cost of greenhouse gas emissions, some of whose estimates rise as high as $400 per ton. Here is a survey I did of the Current Cost of Carbon as of April, 2015
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-current-cost-of-carbon.html
Carbon pricing is all well and good although full ecological cost accounting would be much, much better (and more accurate). However, talking about carbon pricing which ignores fossil foolish subsidies is working against yourself for the benefit of the fossil fools. The International Energy Agency's 2015 Special Report on Energy and Climate Change (http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/WEO2015SpecialReportonEnergyandClimateChange.pdf) concludes that
"Carbon markets covered 11% of global energy-related emissions in 2014 and the average price was $7 per tonne of CO2. In contrast, 13% of CO2 emissions were linked to fossil-fuel use supported by consumption subsidies, equivalent to an implicit subsidy of $115 per tonne of CO2."
If I understand that correctly, it means in 2014 we had a global average price of $7 per tonne on CO2 with an implicit subsidy of $115 per tonne for fossil fuels at the present moment. But I could be wrong.
According to the Natural Resources Defense Fund (https://www.nrdc.org/resources/g7-fossil-fuel-subsidy-scorecard$26), the USA subsidizes fossil fools by $26 billion in 2017 and the G7 together spends $84 billion to support oil, gas, coal…. They estimate that fossil foolish subsidies amount to over $100 billion per year globally.
There is a more serious objection I have to the way we “argue” climate change, however. Why should we concentrate on the theological debate about whether cimate change (a Frank Lantz approved appellation) exists, is caused by homo sap sap (the sap), and that said saphead might be able to do anything about it?
Everybody knows, whatever their views on climate change, that there is liable to be a weather or natural emergency - flood, drought, heat wave, blizzard, earthquake, tsunami, the whole catastrophe - sometime within the next few years and it would be prudent to prepare. Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina and every natural disaster since has made the cities, states, and Federal governments consider weather resilience and adaptation for peak events. Talk to first responders and the military. They know all about disaster prep, renewables, and logistics in life and death conditions.
Culturally, there is a “prepper” culture which seems to be a branch of the far Right, edging into survivalists and independent militias. There is a Left version which is much less known, organized, and, probably, much smaller. Then there's a good chunk in the center who like a feeling of some self-reliance and independence. After all, "According to the National Gardening Association (NGA), 35 percent of households in the US grow food either at home or in a community garden. This means that two million more families are involved in gardening, up 200 percent since 2008.” [Source: http://www.farmerfoodshare.org/farmer-foodshare/2017/6/15/gardening-boom-1-in-3-american-households-grow-food]
Today, solar electricity for civil defense - light, phone, ability to charge small batteries - costs $10 retail. Just do a simple search online and you can buy one and have it sent to your home within a week or two. [More at http://solarray.blogspot.com/2018/09/personal-power-set.html] Emergency electricity is also entry level electricity for the billion + people around the world who don’t have access to power yet. At retail prices, we could end deep energy poverty all around the globe with what we spend in a day or less on the global military.
With renewables becoming that affordable on a personal level and some utilities now contracting new wind and solar installations at about 2¢ per kWh while existing coal plants cost 4—20¢ per kWh and coal gasification combined cycle plants cost 4—8¢ per kWh to operate, the economics make our present politics a joke.
[Source: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/12/18/1820019/-Building-New-Renewables-Cheaper-than-Operating-Existing-Coal-Plants]
However, I know of nobody who is interested in arguing that Solar IS Civil Defense so let's work on weather emergency preparedness instead of arguing into the stalemate on climate change, including Bob Inglis and his RepublicEns. (I know because I’ve talked with Inglis about this and have corresponded with his organization.)
Another common sense approach that shifts the climate change stalemate is the “no regrets” strategy of doing what can be done to adapt to or mitigate climate change that already has economic or social benefits over, above, and beyond their benefits to climate change. That is an idea that various environmental groups have put forward at least since the 1980s with little or no success in my reckoning.
Lastly, the argument that the transition from fossil foolishness to renewables can be an economic and job boom has also been a non-starter since at least the Carter administration, even though there are more and more studies which show it to be accurate (https://cleantechnica.com/2018/12/29/24-million-jobs-could-be-created-from-meeting-paris-climate-agreement-targets/). For the USA, a renewables manufacturing boom is probably one ship that sailed a decade ago as China has stepped up to do renewables manufacturing on a world-scale. There is an argument that China’s decision to go all in on renewables could be our saving grace.
As someone who has tracked energy and climate change for the last 40 years from my perch halfway between Harvard and MIT, whose intellectual content I poach as much as possible, the Schultz Baker proposal is seriously flawed and almost the entire climate change debate is usually off the point, leading nowhere. And that includes many of the most famous and best climate scientists, unfortunately, in my estimation.
I am a practical person who starts from the individual on up and out, not from national policy on down (and out). Glad to see this editorial in the NYTimes even though I disagree with its principle proposal. There has always been close to unanimous agreement on what to do about climate change if we ever thought to approach it as a response to weather emergency preparedness. Maybe we should try it sometime.
My approach to climate change is
100% renewables ASAP
zero emissions economy ASAP
carbon drawdown ASAP
geotherapy (not geoengineering) ASAP
Resources: http://drawdown.org
https://www.crcpress.com/Geotherapy-Innovative-Methods-of-Soil-Fertility-Restoration-Carbon-Sequestration/Goreau-Larson-Campe/p/book/9781466595392
http://bio4climate.org
http://soil4climate.org
http://solarray.blogspot.com
At least as a thought experiment.
[More at http://solarray.blogspot.com/2018/12/my-approach-to-climate-change.html]
I sent a previous incarnation of these remarks to Arlie Hochschild and she responded that she likes the Solar IS Civil Defense idea. Perhaps after 20 years of talking about this approach others are now willing to carry it forward.
But again, I could be wrong.