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Your Grandma on Global Warming
The public cares more about energy prices than global warming.
Peter Teague and Jeff Navin wrote a very good piece about energy politics for the American Prospect. They lead with a punch: The camera pans in on a scene in a simple American bedroom. An elderly woman sits on the bed, getting dressed to venture out into the cold. She puts on an old coat, over the top of another coat, and then a scarf and hat. Just when we think she's going to get up, she turns off the lamp, lies down, and pulls the covers up. This is not a "message problem" - this is a conceptual problem that cuts to the heart of the global warming challenge. Anyone who seeking to pass global warming legislation that "establishes a price for carbon" -- either through a carbon tax or a carbon cap -faces a Gordian knot: if you price carbon high (e.g., $150/ton), you'll send electricity and gasoline prices through the roof, thus triggering a political backlash from voters and politicians who don't want to pay anything more in gasoline or electricity, much less a lot more, or you price carbon low (e.g., Senator Bingaman's proposal which would price carbon at $7/ton starting in 2012, rising to $15/ton in 2050) and nothing much happens to acclerate the transition to a clean energy economy. Large public investments, Teague and Navin argue, like the ones advocated by both the Stern Review and the UN's IPCC, become a way to cut the Gordian knot. Big public investments in clean energy - everything from R&D to efficiency to mass transit - will bring down the cost of clean energy. The goal? Make clean energy cheaper. This - not making dirty energy expensive - should be at the center of the new politics of power. It's triggered a debate at Grist and commentary by Roger Pielke on the journal Nature's blog. Crickets from environmental leaders.
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