New social values research offers insights into the challenges facing carbon taxes, cap and trade, congestion pricing and other "environmental pricing reform" proposals.
American climate policy advocates should watch our neighbor to the north closely. With social and political values not too distant from our own and an economic makeup broadly similar, Canada's experiments with climate policy - particularly carbon pricing schemes - offer a real-world laboratory we would be wise not to ignore. While Canadians are broadly supportive of actions to address climate change, proposals at both the federal and provincial levels to establish a price on global warming pollution have met with difficulty. We covered the failure of the national Liberal Party's "Green Shift" carbon tax proposal in the October 2008 elections here, and have watched closely as British Columbia battles over their controversial, first-in-North American carbon tax system. Now, social values research firm Environics (the sister firm to our colleagues at American Environics) has new research findings that shed light on the difficulties facing 'environmental pricing reform' proposals like carbon taxes, cap and trade, and congestion pricing. Environics' Keith Neuman presents their findings in this piece, originally posted at Green Business...
By Keith Neuman, Ph.D.
Environmental pricing reform (or EPR) is the term now used to describe the various types of market mechanisms (e.g. carbon pricing, cap and trade, congestion fees) which are now being given serious attention as the most promising strategy for addressing climate change and other pressing environmental challenges such as water scarcity and traffic congestion. This concept has been around for some time, and is now finally receiving serious attention on the North American policy agenda. Economists have long been making a persuasive case for harnessing market forces to achieve environmental objectives, but only recently has this cause been adopted by major players, such as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy. The idea that society puts a monetary price on environmental "goods" and "bads", and then letting market forces do their work (as they do with most other forms of business and consumer behavior) is compelling.
Governments and industry now seem ready to move forward with environmental pricing strategies, but is the Canadian public ready to buy in? The limited experience to date is hardly promising. Over the past year, the B.C. provincial carbon tax has been implemented but remains highly controversial (it has become a major issue in the current provincial election), and the Federal Liberal Party's touted "Green Shift" election platform failed spectacularly with the electorate. These early examples suggest there is sufficient citizen resistance to make EPR a difficult political sell. Why should this be the case, given the clear evidence that EPR can be an effective environmental policy? There are three central reasons.
First, is it axiomatic that consumers prefer not to pay more for goods and services, and will resist at varying levels when asked to do so. This is the most commonly understood basis for resistance to EPR, and many policy makers mistakenly believe it is the overriding obstacle. But in fact this dilemma is by no means limited to environmental policy, and has not prevented other successful economic policy measures that shifted costs to consumption, such as the GST and the Ontario Health Premiums. Such measures do not succeed because they are popular, but when they are deemed acceptable given their purpose by a sufficiently critical mass of relevant constituents.
Second, the public is skeptical about the effectiveness of EPR, in terms of how paying more for gasoline, water or consumer goods will actually benefit the environment. Research has shown that public resistance to B.C.'s carbon tax has as much to do with doubts about its effectiveness in reducing the province's greenhouse gas emissions as it does with paying a few more cents per litre at the pump. Consumers can readily understand how stiffer regulations or new technologies can make a difference in cleaning up pollution, but it requires a greater act of faith to believe that higher prices or trading systems will accomplish the same goals. Such faith requires confidence in both the intentions and efficacy of governments and industry, and neither has been seen to have done much to justify this level of confidence. Moreover, there continues to be a widely-held public sentiment that market-based environmental policies, such as cap and trade systems, favour industry by giving it a "license to pollute."
Third, at a deeper level environmental pricing reform is not currently well-positioned in terms of how it fits within Canadians' social values and broad world views. This conclusion comes from a research study Environics recently completed for Sustainable Prosperity, a multi-stakeholder non-profit initiative dedicated to promoting EPR policy in Canada (www.sustainableprosperity.ca). This research revealed that Canadians generally view environmental pricing mechanisms in narrow economic terms (akin to other conventional financial levers), without much appreciation of the broader principles of "polluter pays" and the positive force of the market to achieve important social goals.
The research identified distinct segments or groups of the Canadian population, based on their orientation to EPR and their broader social values. It found that among supporters of EPR, there is only a very small group (4%) who understand and support EPR in the same way as the economists and policy-makers who promote it. Most of the Canadians who express support for EPR (13% of the population) do so for very different reasons - they put much less priority on environmental solutions but rather are pro-market enthusiasts who accept the inevitability of market forces whatever their effect (e.g. they are very strong on a social value Environics defines as "social darwinism", and weak on one called "primacy of environmental protection"). While this latter group is on-side with environmental pricing, they are hardly the kind of supporters sought by EPR advocates.
On the opposite side of the issue, the strongest opponents of EPR are those Canadians who make up the most vulnerable parts of society, including women, older Canadians, and those with the lowest levels of education. This group (21% of the population) sees EPR more as a threat than as a solution to anything. They may care about the environment, but tend to be more focused on day-to-day concerns. There is little potential for building support for environmental pricing initiatives within this group, but it is hardly one that can be ignored if EPR policy is to succeed in Canada.
In the middle is a sizeable group (33%) which is on the fence about EPR. This group (we call them "responsible citizens") has a high degree of social responsibility and concern about the environment. These Canadians are open to the potential of market mechanisms to offer solutions to issues like climate change because they are truly worried about these issues and feel strongly that progress is essential. But they are also concerned about how EPR might affect those more vulnerable than themselves; they are unlikely to support pricing policies that do not treat everyone fairly and make provisions for those who are disadvantaged. The size and composition of this group makes it a critical constituency for building public support for broad-based environmental pricing initiatives, and attracting its support will require demonstrating how such initiatives address social and economic equity issues.
What does this research tell us about what it will take to build the necessary public support in Canada to move forward with environmental pricing reform? EPR will continue to be a tough sell to consumers until such market mechanisms are framed in ways that are more in tune with Canadians' social values, and in particular address the discomfort many citizens have with using market forces to address environmental objectives. This cannot be accomplished through facts and arguments alone (which rarely sway established public attitudes), but through developing a new narrative that more effectively defines EPR in what it will accomplish, in meeting broadly held environmental, economic and social aspirations.
Keith Neuman (keith.neuman@environics.ca) is Group Vice-President, Public Affairs, for Environics Research Group Ltd.
Summers calls for next growth to be based on public investment -- amazing to hear it from Summers. But Johnson notes that the massive debt we've incurred through bailing out the banks may get in the way of that:
Forbearance on banks may work, but at great cost to the taxpayer. And how is that helpful to either to Summers' stated strategy of growth led by further public investment, or - given the existing state of our public finances - to a more plausible strategy of (nonfinancial) technological innovation?
The Brookings Institution and the Breakthrough Institute argue for major federal investments in a new energy innovation system. (Originally published Yale e360)
We have a new article published at Yale Environment 360 with the Brookings Institution today arguing for major federal investments in a new energy innovation system, based on a recent proposal by Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Project, which included contributions from the Breakthrough Institute and cited our previous report, "Fast, Clean, & Cheap." Note: Jesse Jenkins and David Warren also co-authored this article, but due to editorial requirements are mentioned as contributors.
To Make Clean Energy Cheaper, U.S. Needs Bold Research Push
For spurring the transformation to a low-carbon economy, the federal and state governments, universities, and the private sector must join together to create a network of energy research institutes that could speed development of everything from advanced batteries to biofuels.
By Mark Muro and Teryn Norris
Yale Environment 360
April 30, 2009
Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently called for "Nobel-level" breakthroughs and a "second industrial revolution" in energy technology to overcome the world's interlinked energy and climate challenges.
Chu's implication: We currently lack the technologies we need to fully avert catastrophic global warming. His admonition: America must dramatically accelerate the development of clean energy technology.
Chu has it right.
The task is clear: To renew the U.S. economy, respond to global climate change, foster the nation's energy security, and help provide the energy necessary to sustainably power global development, America must transform its outdated energy policy. Innovation and its commercialization must move to the center of energy system reform. The nation must move urgently to develop and harness a portfolio of clean energy sources that are affordable enough to deploy on a mass scale throughout the U.S. and the world. In short, we must make clean energy cheap.
Putting a price on carbon will take us part of the way, but not nearly far enough. To make the revolutionary shift to a low-carbon economy, we propose a bold new research paradigm: the creation, over time, of several dozen renewable energy research hubs around the nation. These centers -- known as energy discovery-innovation institutes, or e-DIIs -- would be established with a combination of federal, state, university, and private funds and would take the lead in accelerating the development of reasonably priced alternative energy technologies and bringing them to the marketplace.
The more things change, the more things stay the same: Senator Arlen Specter announced today he would be switching party allegiance and running for re-election as a Democrat in 2010. Unfortunately, the new "D" next to his name is unlikely to change the policy positions of this free-thinking Senator from Pennsylvania - especially when it comes to climate legislation.
The 'interwebs' are abuzz today with the surprise announcement that moderate Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is switching parties and plans to run as a Democrat when he makes his 2010 re-election bid.
The move is clearly a powerful symbol of how far to the right the Republican Party has moved in recent years. What it means for policy is less clear.
Senator Specter's membership in the Democrat ranks would nominally give the party the sixty votes necessary to overcome the near-constant threat of Republican filibuster in the Senate (assuming Democrat Al Franken wins the contested court battle that will decide Minnesota's senate seat). That has prompted a sudden burst of optimism about the prospects of contentious Democratic policy priorities, including health care reform and climate change legislation.
ClimateProgress's Joe Romm blithely asserts, for example, that Senator Specter's new party allegiance will mean he'll change his stance on climate legislation. "One assumes that if he is going to seriously run as a Democrat, he'll support an energy and climate bill," Romm wrote today.
More astuteobservers, however, quickly recognize that Senator Specter's move changes little in the landscape of climate politics. For serious advocates of urgently needed and effective climate legislation, it's not hard to see why. We simply have to ask ourselves: does the "D" next to this free-thinking Senator's name suddenly change his vote on climate legislation? Of course not.
Today, President Obama announced a new national energy education initiative to inspire and train tens of thousands of young Americans "to tackle the single most important challenge of their generation -- the need to develop cheap, abundant, clean energy and accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy."
President Obama's new energy education initiative, announced today at the National Academy of Sciences, takes a very similar approach. As he declared today:
"There will be no single Sputnik moment for this generation's challenges to break our dependence on fossil fuels... But energy is our great project, this generation's great project... the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation will be launching a joint initiative to inspire tens of thousands of American students to pursue these very same careers, particularly in clean energy. It will support an educational campaign to capture the imagination of young people who can help us meet the energy challenge... And it will support fellowships and interdisciplinary graduate programs and partnerships between academic institutions and innovative companies to prepare a generation of Americans to meet this generational challenge."
This new initiative is a big step in the right direction, and we applaud President Obama and his administration for their commitment to inspiring and training the next generation of clean energy innovators. As we wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle last July:
"It is imperative that we transform our nation's universities, colleges and vocational schools into multidisciplinary hubs of clean energy innovation... Today, a National Energy Education Act would equip a new generation of Americans with the highest-caliber human capital, inspire them to tackle energy as their generational undertaking, and pave the way for new industries and technologies that will drive the U.S. economy for decades to come."
The carbon offset provisions in the House Energy and Climate Bill could sap half a trillion dollars out of the U.S. economy between 2012 and 2030 and over $2 trillion between now and 2050, according to Breakthrough Senior Fellow David Douglas.
In my role of Chief Sustainability Officer at Sun, I take part in an annual discussion of whether the company should purchase carbon offsets as part of our GHG reduction plan. Since we can buy carbon offsets at a price which is lower than what it costs us to reduce our GHG directly, we have four different approaches available to us:
use offsets to report a greater emissions reduction at the same price as if we only did internal projects
use offsets to report the same emissions as internal projects, but at a lower price
ignore offsets and just do internal projects
some mix of offsets and internal projects
So far, each year we have elected to only invest in internal projects. Our rationale is that we can help the company and the environment with that choice -- the company gets more efficient and the we lower our direct GHG emissions. Furthermore we find that this rationale is applicable to each marginal dollar of investment, so that we end up only investing in internal projects as opposed to a mix. This means that the emissions reductions that we report aren't as low as they theoretically could be, but that's a tradeoff that we think makes sense for us, since we keep reducing our own emissions instead of paying others to reduce theirs.
As it thinks about creating a cap and trade system, the US Government faces the same decision: do we allow international offsets in order to keep costs down and/or make the results look better, or do we stick to investing within the country?
The United States will restore its standing as the most innovative nation in the world, President Obama declared at a major speech on science, innovation, and education policy. He pledged an order of magnitude increase in federal energy R&D spending and promised to support a new generation of young scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs as they help overcome pressing innovation challenges, secure the nation's prosperity and restore our economic competitiveness.
The United States will restore its standing as the most innovative nation in the world, President Obama declared at a major speech on science, innovation, and education policy delivered today at the National Academies of Science in Washington D.C.
The President pledged to implement policies that will dramatically ramp up the United States' overall spending (both public and private) on innovation and R&D, bringing it up to three percent of the nation's total economic output (GDP). President Obama also declared that it was his goal to see the nation once again have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by 2020.
The stimulus bill's $21.5 billion investment in science and technology was the largest investment in R&D in the nation's history, Obama said. He promised that his administration would build on these investments by continuing to expand budgets for key agencies funding science and research (DOE, NSF, NIST), making permanent the federal R&D tax credit to encourage private-sector investment in innovation, and launching a major increase in funding to support the transformative innovation necessary to overcome the nation's energy and climate challenges.
The President's speech was also laden with references to the critical role innovation plays in securing the nation's prosperity and economic competitiveness and said he was committed to expanding science and innovation funding, in spite of (and even because of) the current economic crisis:
"At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science. That support for research is somehow a luxury at a moment defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been. And if there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it's today.
For advocates of immediate and strong climate and clean energy legislation, there's one man we should all be paying close attention to: Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
Senator Brown is one of several Democratic Senators from America's 'Heartland' states that form the critical swing block of legislators that will need to support any climate and clean energy bill that hopes to cross the critical 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Along with a small handful of potential Republican swing votes, these Heartland Democrats have to get behind strong climate policy if we want to see it enacted anytime soon.
House GOP Looking For Friendly Dems To Stop Pollution Legislation
CQ reports that House Republicans are trying to forge alliances with Democrats from industrial states to fight the objectives of the Democratic leadership on pollution. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is looking for Dems to support legislation barring the EPA from regulation carbon dioxide, and Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) has said that a carbon tax or cap-and-trade "amount to a declaration of economic war on the Midwest by Democrats on Capitol Hill."
If we want to pass policies that will truly catapult the United States into a clean and prosperous energy economy, slash global warming pollution, and make clean energy cheap and abundant, we need to pass the "Sherrod Brown Test."
For advocates of immediate and strong climate and clean energy legislation, there's one man we should all be paying close attention to: Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
Senator Brown has spoken eloquently on multiple occasions about the power of clean energy technologies to revitalize the hard-hit industrial communities of Ohio and other Heartland states. Just this week, the Ohio Senator penned an op ed in the Capitol Hill paper Roll Call declaring that the time is now to enact strong climate policy:
"If we care about the world in which we live and the generations that will follow us, then we must no longer dismiss the lethal risks global warming poses to our planet. We must craft an aggressive strategy to combat global warming, and we must do it now. ... Inaction is not an option."
Senator Brown is still on the fence, and as the old saying goes, 'the devil is truly in the details:' if the details of climate and clean energy legislation make it something Senator Brown can support and even champion, then there's a decent shot of seeing the remaining swing Senators jump on board, putting 60 votes within reach. On the other hand, if Senator Brown can't support the proposal because he's not convinced it's in the best interests of Ohio or the nation, then kiss hopes of climate action this year good bye.
It's simple: if we want to pass policies that will truly catapult the United States into a clean and prosperous energy economy, slash global warming pollution, and make clean energy cheap and abundant, we need to pass the "Sherrod Brown Test."
We have a post up at Salon today that criticizes cap and trade legislation in the House (Waxman-Markey). We argue that it cannot achieve the clean energy revolution we need. Compromises will no doubt be necessary to pass climate legislation in Congress, but as currently drafted, Waxman-Markey looks like it will make all the wrong compromises, allowing firms to buy dubious and sometimes phony carbon offsets rather than invest in clean energy, giving away billions of pollution allocations to incumbent energy interests for free, and committing a fraction of the funds needed for direct public investments in clean energy research, development, and deployment.
We propose an alternative cap and trade, which would explicitly cap the price of carbon dioxide pollution at roughly $10 per ton, rising over time, would auction all pollution allowances with no free giveaways and no offsetting, and would use the vast majority of the revenues, about $60 billion a year, to fund the accelerated development and deployment of clean energy technologies. We believe that such a solution would more rapidly achieve the technological innovations we need at a lower cost. It is also great politics, given strong public support for government investment in clean energy technology. This is the same position we have held since 2007, when we laid out this basic approach in Break Through and other writings.
The White House says it's serious about climate change. But its plan to regulate carbon emissions is doomed to fail. ... Nordhaus and Shellenberger in Slate.
Last week brought more bad news for supporters of cap and trade climate legislation. It came in the form of an appearance by House Energy and Commerce Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman's appearance on PBS' "The Tavis Smiley Show." When asked how cap and trade would create technology innovation, Waxman said, "When we raise the price of energy -- which will happen if we reduce the amount of carbon emissions -- and industries have to figure out how to live in a carbon-constrained environment, they are going to have to figure it out because it is in their profitable interest to figure it out."
Waxman's blunt statement that the goal of cap and trade is to raise energy prices was deeply off-message for green groups, which have long insisted that energy efficiency and conservation would prevent energy prices from rising. But it was only the latest in a series of setbacks for climate legislation.
The United Kingdom will release this week plans for building new coal plants:
Mounting fears within government circles that Britain's utilities are poised for a new dash for gas - increasing the country's future power dependence on fuel imports from Russia - has persuaded Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, to back funding for a second clean coal demonstration power plant.
In an attempt to ensure that coal remains part of the UK energy mix, he will also set out licensing conditions for more coal power stations.
Mr Miliband's renewed pitch for clean coal, which could be timed to coincide with the Budget on Wednesday, is to be pushed out quickly to counter scepticism in the power industry that the Government has a viable strategy to promote carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.
Jesse, what exactly is investing public money in deployment of wind farms and PV arrays supposed to accomplish if you do it [along] with a carbon cap/trade? Its one thing to address market failures like a lack of research and transmission, but deploying extra carbon-reduction measures in sectors covered by the cap will not compel emissions reductions beyond what the cap mandates. What am I missing?
Below the fold, you'll find my reply, which articulates three reasons why clean energy investments are critical to climate objectives. We'll leave the part about how investing in a clean and prosperous energy economy is also a politically powerful proposition that strengthens the political appeal of climate policy for another day (check here if you're interested (pdf)).
In an editorial today criticizing the most recent Obama team announcement on bank recovery policy, the Wall Street Journal editorial board claimed it has supported bank restructuring for 2 years:
"The sounder strategy -- and the one we've recommended for two years -- is to address systemic financial problems the old-fashioned way: bank by bank, through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and a resolution agency with the capacity to hold troubled assets and work them off over time. If the stress tests reveal that some of our largest institutions are insolvent or nearly so, it's then time to seize the bank, sell off assets and recapitalize the remainder. (Meanwhile, the healthier institutions would get a vote of confidence and could attract new private capital.)"
So the question must be raised: where is the Obama administration getting its advice on bank policy at this point, and how is it continuing to justify its opposition to swift nationalization? Even the Congressional Oversight Committee, in its latest April report, supports restructuring or liquidation of the banks. Geithners and Summers aren't stupid, so the only reasonable answer is politics.
President Obama is well known for bold proposals that have raised expectations, but his administration has shown a tendency for compromise and caution, and even a willingness to capitulate on some early initiatives...
"The thing we still don't know about him is what he is willing to fight for," said Leonard Burman, an economist at the Urban Institute and a Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration. "The thing I worry about is that he likes giving good speeches, he likes the adulation and he likes to make people happy." So far, he said, "It's hard to think of a place where he's taken a really hard position."
Can Obama simply not stand up to the political pressure from bankers pushing against bank restructuring? That's what former chief IMF economist Simon Johnson recently argued in his seminal Atlantic piece, "The Quiet Coup." Or is it largely an ideological problem, particularly with Geithners and Summers?
Nothing is 100% clear, but what's certain is that Obama is performing poorly on this issue, and unless his administration's performance improves soon, it could become the Achilles heal of his legacy. As Robert Kuttner, author of the best-seller "Obama's Challenge" and major Obama supporter, recently concluded an op-ed:
"I fear that these columns have been too polite. They have directed criticisms at Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and national economic policy chief Larry Summers. Lord knows, they richly deserve the criticism. But let's not kid ourselves. The man they work for is named Barack Obama.
President Obama has promised to run an administration of unprecedented openness. And in some respects, such as the ground rules for spending stimulus funds, he has. But in the most important area of all, the financial rescue, the administration is making trillion dollar decisions relying on the Federal Reserve and a small Wall Street club of advisors, with no transparency or public accountability...
We were promised unprecedented openness. In the most momentous area of policy for getting the economy functioning again for ordinary Americans, we have instead unprecedented secrecy, designed by and for Wall Street. We expected better of Obama."
Congressman Henry Waxman, Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee says, "by and large," the revenues from climate and clean energy legislation should be reinvested in clean energy technologies; openly critiques President Obama's plan to return 80% of carbon revenues to taxpayers.
Congressman Henry Waxman says, "by and large," the revenues from climate and clean energy legislation should be reinvested in clean energy technologies, Bloomberg News reported Friday.
The statement is a marked improvement over Congressman Waxman's appearance on PBS' Tavis Smiley show last Monday, when he seemed to indicate that the primary driver of clean energy technology innovation and deployment would be the higher prices on dirty fuels set by proposed cap and trade legislation and made little mention of the critical role public investments in clean energy can and must play in accelerating the birth of a clean, prosperous energy economy.
Like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's prior statements that cap and trade is designed to "pay for some of these investments in energy independence and renewables," Waxman's latest remarks could indicate a growing consensus among House leadership that carbon revenues should be primarily used to spur clean energy technologies and accelerate the transition to a clean, new energy economy.
Congressman Waxman, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee set to draft climate and clean energy legislation over the coming weeks, was also openly critical of President Obama's proposal to send the bulk of revenues raised from a proposed cap and trade system back to taxpayers in the form of middle class tax cuts. Bloomberg quotes the Congressman as saying:
"I don't think that's the best use of it [carbon revenues]," Waxman said. "By and large" it should be spent on green technologies, he said, and part of it could be used to "help consumers with higher energy costs" and hard-hit industries, "especially coal."
The draft climate and clean energy bill circulated three weeks ago by Congressman Waxman and Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) (who chairs the subcommittee taking the first crack at the bill beginning this week) made little commitment to the public investments necessary to spur clean energy innovation and accelerate the deployment of clean energy technologies. Waxman's statements last week indicate that commitment may be coming soon, as Markey and Waxman begin the real work of drawing up the climate and energy legislation they hope to send to the House floor by Memorial Day.
Today's ClimateWire has a story about the debate over the costs of cap and trade:
From the halls of Congress to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, experts and politicians are hoisting conflicting numbers describing the cost of a cap on greenhouse gases, with amounts from $3,100 to $324 to zero being touted as the annual hit on households. As Congress returns this week, it will find a cloud of numerical discrepancies hovering over climate change legislation.
This is a great example of the consequences of how issues are framed in political debate. If the framing is "costs" of cap and trade legislation, the Republicans will win the political debate, regardless of whose numbers turn out to be right. Of course, the reality is that cap and trade can be designed in any way you'd like with high or low (or zero) costs. But remember that the theoretical basis of cap and trade is that energy prices will increase, so low or zero cost increases will have low or zero effect on emisisons.
The political point is that if the debate hinges on costs, Republicans have the upper hand because if Democrats respond with claims of low or zero costs, and if this turns out to be untrue, then such claims will become a political liability. But if the claims of low costs turn out to be true, they will gut the policy from the standpoint of emissions reductions, and thus become a political liability.
Bottom line: Democrats cannot win the cap and trade debate if the issue is framed as costs to American households.
In a new draft report, the advisory board to the National Science Foundation calls on the government to "develop and lead a nationally coordinated research, development demonstration, deployment, and education (RD3E) strategy to advance a sustainable energy economy."
Much as the Breakthrough Institute has long advocated, the National Science Board calls for a major increase in federal funding to "[s]upport a range of sustainable energy alternatives, their enabling infrastructure, and their effective demonstration and deployment." The report calls for a ramp-up in clean energy "RD3E" activities - research, development, demonstration and deployment as well as education.
While it does not include a specific funding level recommendation, the National Science Board calls on the federal government to "support a national sustainable energy R&D program at a greatly increased and appropriate scale to meet sustainable energy technological and deployment challenges necessary to reduce energy intensity and carbon intensity in a timely manner."
Cries of alarm from the environmental left warn that offset provisions in cap-and-trade legislation "blow to pieces" the supposedly hard caps on global warming pollution at the heart of the proposal.
Is the cap and trade system at the core of the draft Waxman-Markey climate and clean energy bill full of hot air? That's what a new report from two environmental organizations warns.
Rainforest Action Network and International Rivers released an initial analysis (pdf) of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy discussion draft yesterday. The two environmental groups conclude that the cap and trade regulations established by the bill would be "blown to pieces" by the up to two billion metric tons of carbon offsets the bill allows polluters to use in lieu of pollution permits.
Despite all of the talk of establishing hard caps on global warming pollution, the use of so many offsets would stuff the cap full of hot air, making it not much of a cap at all. The report concludes:
Unfortunately the "firm" caps exist only on paper. In reality, the caps will be blown to pieces by allowing polluters to meet their emission reduction responsibilities through buying offset credits rather than reducing their emissions.
If the full amount of offsets allowed by the Waxman-Markey draft legislation were utilized by polluters, the report concludes that any actual emissions reductions in capped sectors of the U.S. economy would be delayed until 2026, allowing a full seventeen years of continued business as usual. (See figure below...)
Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2C will succeed, a Guardian poll reveals today. Time to get serious about adaptation, geoengineering, air capture and transformational innovation.
Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2C will succeed, a Guardian poll reveals today. An average rise of 4-5C by the end of this century is more likely, they say, given soaring carbon emissions and political constraints.
Such a change would disrupt food and water supplies, exterminate thousands of species of plants and animals and trigger massive sea level rises that would swamp the homes of hundreds of millions of people.
The poll of those who follow global warming most closely exposes a widening gulf between political rhetoric and scientific opinions on climate change. While policymakers and campaigners focus on the 2C target, 86% of the experts told the survey they did not think it would be achieved. A continued focus on an unrealistic 2C rise, which the EU defines as dangerous, could even undermine essential efforts to adapt to inevitable higher temperature rises in the coming decades, they warned.
A new study concludes that California's energy efficient economy offers less of a model for the nation than many advocates assert. What's driving the Golden State's efficient electricity use and what does it say about our efforts to build a sustainable and prosperous 21st century energy economy?
Kate Galbraith at the NYTimes' Green Inc. blog dives into that question in a recent post, "Deciphering California's Energy Efficiency Success." Galbraith looks at a new study critical of the attempts frequently made by climate and energy efficiency advocates to hold up California's low per-capita electricity use as proof that cutting carbon emissions won't be all that hard.
Talk to any California utility or environmental advocate, and at some point they are bound to cite - with pride - the flattening out of the state's per-capita electricity use.
Since 1975, the amount of electricity per person has grown by almost 50 percent in the rest of the country, but California's numbers have stayed nearly level.
Advocates often credit energy-efficiency measures taken by utilities, at the behest of the state.
Unfortunately, matters aren't that simple it seems, according to a new study from Cynthia Mitchel and two colleagues at Energy Economics, which suggests that many of the drivers behind California's low per-capita electricity consumption have nothing to do with the state's battery of policies encouraging energy efficiency.
This morning brought more bad news for supporters of cap and trade climate legislation. It came in the form of an appearance by House Energy and Commerce Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Santa Monica) on PBS' Tavis Smiley. When asked how cap and trade would create technology innovation, Waxman said:
When we raise the price of energy, which will happen if we reduce the amount of carbon emissions, and industries have to figure out how to live in a carbon-constrained environment, they are going to have to figure it out because it is in their profitable interest to figure it out.
Waxman's call for raising energy prices comes after a month of setbacks for cap and trade proponents. In March, the White House floated the idea of passing cap and trade and health care bills as part of the budget in order to avoid reaching the 60 votes needed to avoid filibuster. Moderate Senate Democrats led by Evan Bayh (D-IN), whose state is over 92 percent dependent on coal electricity, joined Republicans in opposing passing cap and trade as a budget resolution.
Then, on March 31, the day after Waxman and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) introduced their climate legislation, the Senate passed a resolution 89-8 saying that the Senate will not pass climate legislation that raises energy prices -- a direct contradiction of what Waxman says his bill will do. The following day, the Senate passed a resolution 98-0 that effectively defined cap and trade as a tax. Unless the Senate can manage to do a cap and trade that does something different than what its sponsor say it will do, historians will likely look back on these resolutions as the moment that cap and trade was buried in the Senate.
If there is a strategy coming from the White House, it's not obvious what it is. Waxman-Markey left enough details unanswered in their legislation that the sponsors could still potentially create a huge, pork-filled bill to buy off moderate Dems and Republicans. But there is no obvious strategy to deal with the problem created in the Senate, where the chamber has said it will not allow cap and trade to raise energy prices. Given the recent turn of events, climate czar Carol Browner's statement at MIT yesterday that she believes cap and trade will pass Congress by December is either extremely bold or delusional.
Stung by the Senate moderates who publicly sided with Republicans against passing cap and trade budget resolution, the White House seems either paralyzed about what to do or focused on its many higher priorities: Afghanistan, Pakistan, the banking crisis, and the auto crisis. Last Friday Times' John Broder noted that the Obama administration would use the possibility of EPA regulating carbon dioxide as a club to move Republicans and moderate Dems to pass legislation.
But Roger Pielke makes the point that such a strategy is certain to backfire on Democrats.
Republicans must be drooling over the possibility that EPA will take extensive regulatory action on climate change. Why? Because the resulting political fallout associated with any actual or perceived downsides (e.g., like higher energy prices) will fall entirely on Democrats and the Obama Administration. Far from being an incentive for Congress to act on its own, the looming possibility that EPA will take regulatory action is a strong incentive for Republicans to stalemate Congressional action and a nightmare scenario for Democrats.
In other words, the White House "threat" to Republicans and moderate Democrats to regulate carbon is the equivalent of threatening your enemy with suicide. ("Don't make me raise energy prices! You'll really be in trouble with your voters when I raise their energy prices!")
The White House and Congressional Democrats are now in a lose-lose situation. They can either pass cap and trade legislation which does not raise energy prices -- which would thus not, according to Waxman, result in any innovation -- or it could continue to try to raise energy prices, handing Republican consultants a powerful political advertisement for restoring bi-partisan balance to Congress as a check on a too liberal White House.
Signs of disarray and division among greens and Democrats are everywhere. Friends of the Earth released a scathing critique of cap and trade just before Waxman introduced climate legislation, warning of "carbon derivatives" markets that could be as dangerous to the economy as credit default swaps. The New York Times' green columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a column last week saying that environmental groups were lousy spokespersons for climate legislation, and then in a Newsweek interview blamed Al Gore for why increasing numbers of Americans are telling Gallup that they think global warming is being exaggerated. And a substantial portion of grassroots environmentalists including author Bill McKibben and Middlebury's Jon Isham, endorsed Rep. Van Hollen's legislation instead of Waxman-Markey.
Gore has been notably silent during the cap and trade debate, with his "We Campaign" reduced to asking members to send letters to the editor which explain that cap and trade won't raise energy prices as much as Republicans say it will. This is part of the larger blame-the-media strategy pioneered by Joe Romm of Climate Progress, who attributes the increase in voters telling Gallup that they believe that news of global warming is being exaggerated to the media, and not to Gore, Friedman, himself, and other greens who routinely use apocalyptic language when describing climate impacts.
Environmental groups are quiet, too. They are not running advertisements, releasing reports, or sending much in the way of email to their members. Into the vacuum has rushed Rep. Waxman and Thomas Friedman, who keep insisting to large television and other audiences that the key to developing clean energy is raising fossil fuel prices -- a claim that has been contradicted by large evaluations of the evidence by the International Energy Agency, McKinsey, Stern and others, who all point to the need for direct government investment in technology.
Another legislative loss on cap and trade would be very hard on green groups. It would come under a Democratic president and Democratic Congress, and would thus force greens to ask themselves a hard question about cap and trade: if it can't pass under those legislative conditions, when can it pass? Even more devastating for greens will be if Republicans can use cap and trade to take back one or both houses of Congress in 2010. If that occurs, greens will be viewed increasingly skeptically on the Hill. And it could undermine the ideological consensus on the Hill among Democrats that cap and trade is the only or the best way to deal with climate change. Moderates who refuse to raise electricity and gasoline prices on their constituents will find common cause with liberal members who favor greater government spending on energy technology, infrastructure and education.
None of this is to say that Congress can't or won't pass cap and trade. It may do so, either next year or after mid-term elections in 2010. But the legislation will not set a price on carbon that will be high enough to result in technology innovation. Given that, the critical question will be whether the legislation can raise enough money through auctioning pollution allowances to fund the technology innovation policies needed to make clean energy cheap and widely available.
The Obama Administration has painted itself into a corner on climate policy, with no really good options for moving forward. The New York Times characterizes the Administration's recent actions on climate policy as follows:
Has the administration scaled back its global-warming goals, at least for this year, or is it engaged in sophisticated misdirection?
Maybe some of both. While addressing climate change appears to be slipping down the president's list of priorities for the year, he is holding in reserve a powerful club to regulate carbon dioxide emissions through executive authority.
That club takes the form of Environmental Protection Agency regulation of the gases blamed for the warming of the planet, an authority granted the agency by the Supreme Court's reading of the Clean Air Act. Administration officials consistently say they would much prefer that Congress write new legislation to pre-empt the E.P.A. regulatory power, but they are clearly holding it in reserve as a prod to reluctant lawmakers and recalcitrant industries and as evidence of good faith to other nations.
Industry lobbyists and members of Congress who are engaged in writing energy and global warming bills say they are well aware of the E.P.A. process bearing down on them.
"Once the Supreme Court declared carbon dioxide to be a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, E.P.A. had no choice but to act," said Representative Rick Boucher, a moderate Democrat from a coal-producing region of Virginia. "Most people would rather have Congress act. We can be more balanced; we can take into account the effects on the economy. But if we don't undertake this, E.P.A. certainly will."
Still, the agency's regulations would take months to write and years to become fully effective. Meanwhile, Congress is already starting work on energy and climate legislation, though without significant guidance from the White House, at least in public.
Republicans must be drooling over the possibility that EPA will take extensive regulatory action on climate change. Why? Because the resulting political fallout associated with any actual or perceived downsides (e.g., like higher energy prices) will fall entirely on Democrats and the Obama Administration. Far from being an incentive for Congress to act on its own, the looming possibility that EPA will take regulatory action is a strong incentive for Republicans to stalemate Congressional action and a nightmare scenario for Democrats.
Expect the Republicans to call the Obama Administration's "EPA will regulate unless you act" bluff.
Earlier this week John Holdren gave his first interview to the AP's Seth Borenstein, a reporter who has a track record of vigorous support for action on climate change and as a determined opponent of the Bush Administration. It is thus no surprise that Borenstein got the first interview. What is a surprise is how Borenstein was so quickly blamed by Holdren for somehow misrepresenting his comments. This flap, a tempest in a teapot really, illustrates some of the challenges faced by the science advisor -- is he part of the Administration or not?
Here are the details. AP reported the following about Holdren's characterization of geoengineering in the White House:
At first, Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions.
"We're talking about all these issues in the White House," Holdren said. "There's a very vigorous process going on of discussing all the options for addressing the energy climate challenge."
Holdren said discussions include Cabinet officials and heads of sub-Cabinet level agencies, such as NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Any reasonable person would come to the conclusion that if the science advisor, Cabinet and sub-Cabinet level officials from agencies including NASA and EPA are talking about geoengineering, then it would be perfectly fair to say that the Obama Administration is considering geoengineering.
After the AP article was published, Holdren sent out a clarifying email, reported by Andy Revkin of the NYT, explaining his dissatisfaction with the AP story.
I also made clear that this was my personal view, not Administration policy. Asked whether I had mentioned geo-engineering in any White House discussions, though, I said that I had. This is NOT the same thing as saying the White House is giving serious consideration to geo-engineering - which it isn't -- and I am disappointed that the headline and the text of the article suggest otherwise.
Over the last few years we've heard a lot about how if just invested in efficiency, like retrofitting old homes, we would save huge amounts of energy and massively reduce our emissions (not to mention create millions of jobs, reduce inner-city poverty, stimulate the economy, etc.). This was the subject of an op-ed in the New York Times on Monday.
But today, the Times ran an interesting correction on the op-ed page:
An Op-Ed article on Monday, about renovating older houses to save energy, included an incorrect figure for the number of homes that would need to be retrofitted every year to save 200 million barrels of oil over a decade. The figure is 300,000, not 3,000.
I went and looked up some of these numbers. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Americans consumed over 20 million barrels of petroleum per day in 2007. About half of that petroleum is in the form of gasoline and the rest is heating oil, industrial distillates, kerosene, jet fuel, etc.
Few houses, of course, are heated by petroleum, so the comparison is inexact. Moreover, I doubt the assumptions embedded recognize that people tend to use more electricity when efficiency lowers the total monthly bill.
The numbers provided by the Times offer a sobering view of how little retrofits will actually do. Here's what we find: If we were to retrofit 3 million homes over the next decade, we would only consume 10 days less petroleum (.27% less). If we were to retrofit 10 times as many homes, 30 million, (which is almost certainly not possible to do in 10 years), we would save just 100 days of oil over a 10 year period (2.7% less).
If these numbers are basically right, then it's safe to conclude that building retrofits will not contribute significantly to reducing overall global emissions. They might be good for other reasons, but they are hardly the basis for a strategy to mitigate warming.
[F]ree range is like piggy day care, a thoughtfully arranged system designed to meet the needs of consumers who despise industrial agriculture and adore the idea of wildness... Free range is ultimately an arbitrary point between the wild and the domesticated. That this arbitrary point is tricky business should come as no surprise. The long history of animal husbandry has been a fervent quest toward intensified control. Free-range pork boldly countered this quest, throwing it into partial reverse. The problem was that it went far enough to expose animals to diseases but not far enough to render the flesh truly wild. What people taste when they eat free range is a result not so much of nature but of human decision.
Christopher Hitchens notes in this month's Atlantic that Marx's observation that capitalism creates chronic crises through the over-supply of goods was proven once again by the current crisis. In this case, the over-supply was of credit -- capital itself:
As I write this, every newspaper informs me of frantic efforts by merchants to unload onto the consumer, at almost any price, the vast surplus of unsold commodities that have accumulated since the credit crisis began to take hold. The phrase crisis of over-production, which I learned so many long winters ago in "agitational" meetings, recurs to my mind. On other pages, I learn that the pride of American capitalism has seized up and begun to rust, and that automobiles may cease even to be made in Detroit as a consequence of insane speculation in worthless paper "derivatives." Did I not once read somewhere about the bitter struggle between finance capital and industrial capital?
The "giant pool of money," as This American Life put it, created by the emergence of productive capitalist Asian economies in the 1990s, flowed into derivatives markets that remained dangerously unregulated thanks to the corruption of the political process by finance capitalists and simplistic free market dogma, which took over both parties during the 1990s, MIT economist Simon Johnson noted in his "Quiet Coup", also in the Atlantic.
I thought the thing that Hitchens missed about the current moment is that finance capitalism not only created the current economic crisis, it also sapped the American economy of the productive capacity of its workforce. It did so by diverting capital to finance, which is parasitical and generates no wealth, away from public goods (e.g., education, infrastructure, R&D labs).
It's depressing to think about how much wealth America could have generated had our physicists spent the last 20 years making solar panels more efficient -- or teaching school children, or doctoring the ill ‹- rather than creating the conditions for American taxpayers to incur a $4 trillion debt bailing out banks. One wonders how all of the unemployed finance professional will look back on their life's work.
But it also gives me hope that if America's best and the brightest were to spend the next 20 years doing things in the interest of a productive economy, we could realize some genuine economic, technological, and social breakthroughs.
Remarkably, with all of the talk of targets and timetables for emissions reduction and expansion of renewable energy technologies, only a few analysts have worked the problem from the other direction, which is to ask, how fast can a big economy decarbonize?
The answer to this question has more to do with the simple math of energy, technological possibilities, and economic and political realities, and less with aspirational goals, over-the-top rhetoric, and wishful thinking. Tuesday's New York Times provided the perspective of major fossil fuel companies on the time scale of decarbonization:
"In my view, nothing has really changed," Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, said after the election of President Obama.
"We don't oppose alternative energy sources and the development of those. But to hang the future of the country's energy on those alternatives alone belies reality of their size and scale."
The administration wants to spend $150 billion over the next decade to create what it calls "a clean energy future." Its plan would aim to diversify the nation's energy sources by encouraging more renewables, and it would reduce oil consumption and cut carbon emissions from fossil fuels.
The oil companies have frequently run advertisements expressing their interest in new forms of energy, but their actual investments have belied the marketing claims. The great bulk of their investments goes to traditional petroleum resources, including carbon-intensive energy sources like tar sands and natural gas from shale, while alternative investments account for a tiny fraction of their spending. So far, that has changed little under the Obama administration.
"The scale of their alternative investments is so mind-numbingly small that it's hard to find them," said Nathanael Greene, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "These companies don't feel they have to be on the leading edge of this stuff."
Perhaps not surprisingly, most investments in alternative sources of energy are coming from pockets other than those of the oil companies.
In the last 15 years, the top five oil companies have spent around $5 billion to develop sources of renewable energy, according to Michael Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, an industry trade group. This represents only 10 percent of the roughly $50 billion funneled into the clean-energy sector by venture capital funds and corporate investors during that period, he said.
"Big Oil does not consider renewable energy to be a mainstream business," Mr. Eckhart said. "It's a side business for them."
Shell, for example, said it spent $1.7 billion since 2004 on alternative projects. That amount is dwarfed by the $87 billion it spent over the same period on its oil and gas projects around the world. This year, the company's overall capital spending is set at $31 billion, most of it for the development of fossil fuels.
Industry executives contend that comparing investments in oil and gas projects with their research efforts in the renewable field is misleading. They say that while renewable fuels are needed, they are still at an early stage of development, and petroleum will remain the dominant source of energy for decades.
I'd welcome pointers to analyses and literature focused on how fast a big economy can decarbonize. Are the energy companies wrong?
John Holdren has given his first interview since being confirmed as President Obama's science advisor. In it he suggests that the Obama Administration is ready to consider geoengineering via particulate injection into the upper atmosphere as well as air capture, citing new cost estimates. Here is an excerpt from the AP article:
John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.
"It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu says "another myth is that we have all the technology we need to solve the energy problem, it's only a matter of political will."
"So, another myth is that we have all the technology we need to solve the energy problem, it's only a matter of political will. I think political will is absolutely necessary ... but we need new technologies to transform the [energy] landscape."
-Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, speaking (before his nomination) in summer 2008 at the National Clean Energy Summit convened by the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), and the Center for American Progress Action Fund (see video below).
Quote starts at 6 minute and 22 seconds into the video. Chu then goes on the speak about the potential for dramatic and transformational technological developments - aka "breakthroughs" - in energy technologies, including solar photovoltaics and biofuels.
Earlier this week Andy Revkin pointed to a new article in press with Geophysical Research Letters by David Easterling and Gerald Wehner, which Revkin summarizes as follows:
The paper shows, both in recent records and projections using computer simulations, how utterly normal it is to have decade-long vagaries in temperature, up and down, on the way to a warmer world.
The goal of the GRL paper is to show that the current period of no rise in temperature is, in Revkin's words, "utterly normal," and in the words of Easterling and Wehner, "entirely possible" and "likely." Revkin was duped by the paper, and I suspect many people will be. What the paper is arguing is not that the current period of no-warming is "utterly normal" or "likely" but that such periods of no warming are "likely." The difference is subtle but critical to understand. That such a paper would pass peer-review with such basic confusion and spin is remarkable in some sense, but probably is to be entirely expected.
The confusion can be illustrated as follows. Imagine that you are playing a game of poker, in which you are dealt 5 cards. You've never played poker before so you don't know the odds for a particular hand. You look at your 5 cards and see that you've been dealt two pairs. You then ask your companion, a poker expert, whether or not your hand is "likely" so that you can evaluate it rigorously. Which of the two responses that follow would you consider to be a more straightforward response to your question?
Response #1 You can see over many hands that being dealt two pairs can and likely will occur. In fact, Joe had two pairs in a hand dealt 20 minutes ago and Tim had one 10 minutes before that. And if you simulate a game of poker you'll find a hand dealt 25 minutes from now has 2 pairs and one 7 minutes later also has two pairs. So in conclusion, both observations and simulations show that two pairs can and are even likely to occur. Your hand, therefore is utterly normal and entirely possible.
Response #2 The odds of you being dealt two pair in any given hand in about 1 in 21, so it is a statistically rare event.
To be more explicit, Easterling and Wehner have (purposely?) confused/conflated two questions, both of which are fair to ask. But they are not the same question.
One is, what are the odds of seeing a decadal cooling trend in a long period of warming?
They answer this by saying that:
. . . it is reasonable to expect that the natural variability of the real climate system can and likely will produce multi-year periods of sustained "cooling" or at least periods with no real trend even in the presence of long-term anthropogenic forced warming.
They support this argument by pointing to historical periods where a decadal lack of warming occurred and also to model runs that show similar decadal periods. This is interesting but unremarkable, and certainly not a novel claim (e.g., you can find similar claims on any number of blogs). This observation certainly wouldn't justify publication of this paper.
The second question is, how unusual is it to see the current period of lack of warming?
Easterling and Wehner focus our attention on the current period of warming by introducing the paper as follows:
Anthropogenic climate change is one of the most contentious scientific issues of our time. Not surprisingly the issue has generated numerous blogs and websites with a wide range of views on the subject. According to a number of these sources the climate is no longer warming, in fact, some claim the planet has been "cooling" since 1998.
Although Easterling and Wehner never answer the question explicitly about how rare the current period of observed warming is, they imply throughout that this is the question that they are addressing. The answer to this question is that the current period with a lack of warming is a pretty rare event. How rare? Easterling and Wehner allow us to answer this question by providing a distribution of 10-year trends from a set of climate model realizations:
. . . for the simulations of the entire 21st century there is still about a 5% chance of a negative decadal trend, even in the absence of any simulated volcanic eruptions. If we restrict the period to the first half of the 21st century the probability increases to about 10% revealing that the trend in surface air temperature has its own positive trend in the A2 emissions scenario.
So a negative decadal trend (though not statistically significant, so perhaps better called a period with a lack of warming) is according to the distribution from these models is a 1 in 10 event. In other words, if Easterling and Wehner were asked ten years ago what the odds of seeing a decade of no warming, they would have answered 10%. They further report that a statistically significant (>95%) negative decadal trend is, according to their analysis, a 1 in 100 event based on 20th century observations, and an impossibility in the 21st century, since it is not found in the realizations (Table 1 of their paper). Of course, all of this and much, much more has been done far more rigorously by Lucia Liljegren, but I digress.
So while it is fair to say that the current period of an extended lack of warming certainly does not disprove global warming over the longer term, it is not appropriate to say that such a period is "utterly normal" or, misleadingly, to imply that this specific occurrence is "likely." Given that we are in the midst of a rare event, it is strange to see a peer reviewed paper claim that "misleading" to raise questions about model predictions or to question established theory in such a context. Are such politicized editorial comments the norm now in climate science?
If temperatures cool further or remain without warming for a few years, it could very well be the case that we do see a statistically significant cooling trend over a decade or longer. Then we would get to see the Easterling and Wehner paper cited again, but in that case by skeptics as evidence that global warming has indeed stopped. That argument would be misleading as well.
In the current decade, climate modelers may have gotten unlucky or there may be real issues with predictions from climate models. We don't know the answer to this question. But the "analysis" of Easterling and Wehner gets us no closer to an answer. They do provide some ammunition for the political debate, but little insight to the science. If one wants to perform rigorous comparisons of climate forecasts and observations, there are far more robust approaches than found in GRL this week.
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman criticizes cap and trade as politically unworkable and suggests that greens shouldn't be the spokespersons for the climate agenda.
In his column today, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman criticized cap and trade as politically unworkable and suggested that greens shouldn't be the spokespersons for the climate agenda. This comes on the heels of an interview with Newsweek's Sharon Begley where he attributes the increase in Americans who say news of global warming is being exaggerated to Al Gore.
The mood must be transatlantic, as British environmentalist Stephan Hale has also published an op-ed piece in the Guardian titled "Climate change is too big a problem to be left to the environmentalists," which makes many similar points.
In the Newsweek interview, Friedman claims that polling by the Times shows that while voters oppose taxes, they support them if you target the money for action on global warming and energy independence. But Friedman has mis-remembered the Times poll in ways that support his policy agenda of a high carbon tax. The difference has significant policy implications
I went back and read the 2007 Times/CBS poll Friedman is referring to. Voters told pollsters they would pay more in taxes or for electricity from solar and wind and would pay more for gasoline to reduce oil dependency. But they said they would NOT want to pay higher taxes if it 'combats climate change' or 'relieves us from living under the thumb of petro-dictators,' as Friedman claimed to Begley. The difference is critical.
Here are the questions that Friedman is mis-remembering. Voters told the pollsters that they:
* Would be willing to pay more in taxes on gasoline and other fuels if money went to research for renewables like solar and wind (64-33)
* Would pay more for electricity if it came from solar or wind (75-20)
* Oppose raising gasoline taxes to deal with global warming (58Â38)
* Support a gasoline tax to reduce dependence on foreign oil (64-30)
* Oppose a gasoline tax to pay for war on terrorism (49-44)
* Oppose a gasoline tax if it was $2/gallon, or $1/gallon (76-20, 70-27)
Contrary to Friedman's claim, voters in the Times/CBS survey support paying more in taxes or for electricity for solar and wind for reasons that are independent of their concern over global warming. Indeed, what this survey found is that voters oppose paying more in gasoline taxes to deal with global warming or the war on terror.
This is consistent with other polls, and is the reason that we have long encouraged a policy agenda focused on increasing investment in clean energy for economic and energy independence reasons, rather than increasing the price of fossil fuels for global warming reasons. If the money for investment comes from a modest carbon tax, all the better. But the public has clearly and repeatedly stated it would only support a tax or higher fossil fuel prices if it used for clean energy investments.
ClimateProgress blogger Joseph Romm flat out ignores (some might say, denies) a wide body of expert consensus on energy innovation, including the positions of Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.
Is it just me, or is ClimateProgress blogger Joseph Romm working hard to marginalize himself as he reinforces an increasingly nonsensical position on energy innovation?
Yet again, Romm has recycled his assertions that no new technological development (beyond very minor improvements to existing technologies) is necessary to tackle the massive global energy and climate challenge. He repeats his efforts to label those who call attention to the scale and urgency of our energy innovation challenge and advocate major investments in energy technology as "climate delayer-equivalents." And Romm does so at the exact same time as he plainly ignores -- one might say, denies -- the wide body of evidence and expert consensus that dramatic innovation to spur both incremental and transformative developments in a whole suite of clean energy technologies is critical if we hope to overcome the climate and energy challenge and preserve a prosperous global society.
Perhaps the most striking indication of how at odds Joe Romm's "breakthrough's are totally irrelevant" position is with expert consensus is this: it directly contradicts the public statements of Secretary of Energy Steven Chu (who Romm lavished praise on when he was selected by Obama).
Japan and Germany, two somewhat unlikely nations, are now world leaders in solar energy installations and are home to booming domestic solar industries. The secret of their success: sustained public investments in both the development and deployment of solar energy technology. Each nation took a distinct path, and lessons can be learned form both.
A solar array installed along a highway near Freiburg, Germany. Japan and Germany, two somewhat unlikely nations, are now world leaders in solar energy installations and are home to booming domestic solar industries. The secret of their success: sustained public investments in both the development and deployment of solar energy technology. Each nation took a distinct path, and lessons can be learned from both.
Two distinct paths led two very different nations--Germany and Japan--to become global leaders in the production and installation of solar photovoltaic technology. Motivated variously by concerns over security, health, climate change and high energy prices, these nations are now home to robust and growing solar industries and solar panels can be found on hundreds of thousands of rooftops across these nations. However, differences in the public policies employed by each nation led to different results: Germany's solar industry is still dependent on subsidized power production costs, while Japan's investments to drive down the costs of solar energy have successfully created a domestic industry that has been independent of federal subsidies since 2005.
Since 1979, the Danish government, through intelligent, sustained public investment, has mobilized the nation in the development of next-generation wind energy. Today, a third of all wind turbines produced in the world are made by Danish firms, and wind power provides twenty percent of the nation's electricity.
Wind turbines, like those deployed across Denmark. Since 1979, the Danish government, through intelligent, sustained public investment, has mobilized the nation in the development of next-generation wind energy. Today, a third of all wind turbines produced in the world are made by Danish firms, and wind power provides twenty percent of the nation's electricity.
At the mouth of Copenhagen harbor, twenty giant wind turbines, arranged in a graceful arc, turn in the coastal breeze. This is Middelgrunden, Denmark's first cooperative wind farm and a symbol of that tiny country's impressive wind energy industry. Middelgrunden's turbines, installed in the late 1990s, were designed by Danish engineers, built and installed by Danish technicians, and generate enough electricity to power 40,000 Danish homes. Perhaps most impressively, the project is owned by over 8,500 cooperative members who share the profits of clean energy generation.
Middelgrunden is a result of Denmark's long and successful collaboration between private industry, individual citizens and, most importantly, strong government support. Since 1979, the Danish government, through intelligent, sustained investment, has mobilized the nation in the development of next-generation wind energy, and the results have been impressive. Today, Danish firms account for one third of the global wind power market and have driven the creation of a booming multi-billion dollar industry. In Denmark alone, 6,300 wind turbines pump energy into the regional grid today, providing roughly twenty percent of the nation's electricity. Wind power accounts for some 25,000 Danish jobs, and in 2007, the industry exported 4.7 billion euros worth of energy technology. Without a doubt, government involvement in the wind sector enabled this Danish success story.
The story of the PC is usually a romantic tribute to the unrestrained genius of lone inventors tinkering in garage workshops. Yet history shows that the active support of the federal government, particularly the U.S. military and space programs, was critical to the rise of Silicon Valley. Indeed, today's personal computer embodies a decades-long collaboration between private innovators and an active government.
An antique Apple II, one of the first commercial personal computers. The story of the PC is usually a romantic tribute to the unrestrained genius of lone inventors tinkering in garage workshops. Yet history shows that the active support of the federal government, particularly the U.S. military and space programs, was critical to the rise of Silicon Valley. Indeed, today's personal computer embodies a decades-long collaboration between private innovators and an active government.
The legend of the personal computer (PC), as it's normally told, emphasizes individual brilliance and initiative. The origins of today's industry titans like Microsoft and Apple are surrounded by romantic images of college dropouts tinkering away in garage workshops. This story is one of independence, of genius allowed to run free and inventions flourishing in the open market. Of course, the government is conspicuously absent here; as Bill Gates has said, "the amazing thing is that all this happened without any government involvement."
The PC legend may be compelling, but like all legends, it has more to do with fiction than fact. While the role of individual innovators can hardly be understated, the active involvement of the federal government - especially the military - was critical to the rise of Silicon Valley. Indeed, today's personal computer embodies a decades-long collaboration between private innovators and an active government.
The purchasing power of the federal government made the microchip an affordable and ubiquitous technology. Government procurement drove the price of microchips down by a factor of fifty in just a matter of years. Consider this: without these public investments in the semiconductor revolution, your iPod would cost $10,000 and be the size of a room!
A modern microprocessor. The purchasing power of the federal government made the microchip an affordable and ubiquitous technology. Government procurement drove the price of microchips down by a factor of fifty in just a matter of years. Consider this: without these public investments in the semiconductor revolution, your iPod would cost $10,000 and be the size of a room!
In 1958, a truly groundbreaking idea was finally realized in the laboratories of Texas Instruments (TI). For years prior, engineers had struggled to design circuits that could drive the increasingly sophisticated electronics of the time. Complex electronic processes required circuits involving many transistors, which had to be painstakingly soldered together, and the connections were unreliable and difficult to produce.
Jack Kilby, a TI engineer, realized that this connection problem - known to the electronics industry as the "tyranny of numbers" - could be solved by making all the transistors in a circuit, as well as their connections, out of a single piece of material. In the late summer of 1958, Kilby carved a complex circuit out of a single piece of germanium metal, and the "integrated circuit" - also known as the microchip - was born.
Other engineers, most notably Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor, quickly improved on Kilby's design, turning a prototype into a promising new innovation. But the future of the microchip was by no means certain. It took the buying power of the U.S. government to make the microchip into a mass-produced, affordable and ubiquitous piece of technology.
Powered human flight was invented in the United States, but by the First World War, America lagged behind in the emerging field of aviation. By mid-century, government support, ranging from R&D programs to deployment contracts, had restored U.S. expertise in aeronautics and laid the foundations for the modern aviation industry
The Wright Flyer on display in the National Air and Space Museum. Powered human flight was invented in the United States, but by the First World War, America lagged behind in the emerging field of aviation. By mid-century, government support, ranging from R&D programs to deployment contracts, had restored U.S. expertise in aeronautics and laid the foundations for the modern aviation industry.
American names like Samuel Langley and the Wright brothers loom large in the history of early flight. But just a few years after Kitty Hawk, America was already lagging behind other nations in the mastery of aviation. European governments poured resources into aeronautics over the early 20th century, compelled by the military needs of the First World War. In 1913, America ranked 14th in government spending on aircraft development, languishing in the company of Brazil and Denmark. Even as Britain, France and Germany made leaps and bounds in aviation design, Langley's "Aerodrome" lay dusty and abandoned in a Smithsonian lab.
By mid-century, however, the U.S. was well on its way to restoring its place at the forefront of civil and military aviation. U.S. factories were churning out better planes, ever faster and cheaper, and American researchers were pioneering radical improvements in aircraft design. Government involvement, from research support to deployment initiatives, was the critical catalyst for this remarkable turnaround, laying the foundations for America's modern aviation industry.
The single greatest solution to the world's interlinking energy, economic and climate crises is to once again harness America's forces of innovation to make clean energy technology both cheap and abundant. To harness this solution we must take a new look at the process of innovation and determine the best mechanisms to catalyze and accelerate technology development.
"It is not an exaggeration to claim that the future of human prosperity depends on how successfully we tackle the two central energy challenges facing us today: securing the supply of reliable and affordable energy; and effecting a rapid transformation to a low-carbon, efficient and environmentally benign system of energy supply."
Technology is a cornerstone of American prosperity, the primary source of our economic competitiveness, and a constant presence in our everyday lives. From the 19th century's advances in manufacturing and transportation to today's cutting-edge developments in biotechnology and computer science, Americans have been world leaders in creating, producing, and deploying innovative technology. Nobel Laureate Robert Solow's classic 1956 economic model of productivity growth demonstrated that technological progress drove at least 80% of economic growth in the United States between 1909 to 19491, and innovation continues to be perhaps the most powerful engine of our prosperity.
Today, America and the world are in energy crisis. Energy prices are escalating, foreign energy dependency is increasing, global warming continues unabated, and all across the world there are billions of people who continue to live without access to energy. The single greatest solution to these crises is to once again harness America's forces of innovation to make clean energy technology both cheap and abundant.
But to harness this solution we must take a new look at the process of innovation and determine the best mechanisms to catalyze and accelerate technology development. This requires looking beyond both the mythos of the lone American inventor and the market fundamentalist ideology that has dominated American politics in recent decades. Instead, we must look closely at several key American technologies and unearth the historic and seemingly ubiquitous government investments that fueled their development.
In a 2009 report, the Breakthrough Institute illuminates the stories behind the invention and diffusion of ten technologies that are everyday facets of our modern lives and offers a new look at government involvement in technological development.
In a report released in 2009, the Breakthrough Institute illuminates the stories behind the invention and diffusion of ten technologies that are everyday facets of our modern lives and offers a new look at government involvement in technological development.
The conventional wisdom on climate change -- from Thomas Friedman to the country's largest environmental organizations -- is that cap and trade regulation and carbon pricing is the best way to promote clean energy innovation. However, a growing number of experts, including Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, are challenging this assumption, recognizing the importance of direct, large-scale public investment to achieve developments in clean energy technology. The outcome of this debate and the correct emphasis on public investment and regulation may determine the course of U.S. and global climate policy.
Case Studies in American Innovation presents ten case studies showing that public investment and active government support has been one of the greatest forces behind the nation's technology development and economic growth. Indeed, public investment in the U.S. was largely responsible for railroads, airplanes, microchips, personal computers, and the birth of the Internet -- all of which drove long-term economic development. This evidence not only challenges conventional wisdom on climate policy, but also on national economic policy, which has been dominated for three decades by neoclassical economists.
If Democrats want to win on climate policy, they must think fast and move quickly to regain control of the debate. ... Teryn Norris in the Huffington Post.
If Democrats want to win on climate policy, they must think fast and move quickly to regain control of the debate. Last week was the opening round of the national climate fight, and the Democratic Congress was nearly knocked out.
It began on Tuesday with the introduction of a major climate bill by Democratic Congressmen Waxman and Markey. The proposal made a fateful choice: it threw out President Obama's "Apollo" plan for investing $150 billion in clean energy and focused instead on meeting the demands of leading environmental organizations, emphasizing cap and trade regulation and a laundry list of electricity and efficiency standards.
Democrats should quickly follow President Obama's lead by shifting the focus of climate legislation from pollution regulation to bold government investment in the clean energy economy.
If Democrats want to win on climate policy, they must think fast and move quickly to regain control of the debate. Last week was the opening round of the national climate fight, and the Democratic Congress was nearly knocked out.
It began on Tuesday with the introduction of a major climate bill by Democratic Congressmen Waxman and Markey. The proposal made a fateful choice: it threw out President Obama's "Apollo" plan for investing $150 billion in clean energy and focused instead on meeting the demands of leading environmental organizations, emphasizing cap and trade regulation and a laundry list of electricity and efficiency standards.
Meanwhile, the response to climate legislation in the Senate was swift and harsh, with Republicans deftly maneuvering to secure the political high ground. Senator Thune (R-SD) introduced an amendment to the budget (which as originally proposed had included revenues from carbon cap and trade) declaring that any climate legislation should "not increase electricity or gasoline prices," which quickly passed 89 to 8. Senator Ensign (R-NV) then proposed an amendment stating that climate policy should not result in higher taxes on the middle class, passing unanimously (98-0). These votes effectively put all but a handful of Democratic Senators on the record opposing policies to raise the price of dirty energy -- the central purpose of cap and trade regulation, including the provisions at the heart of the Waxman-Markey bill.
What went wrong? The Democratic Congress made a critical mistake in following the direction of leading green groups like Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council. By tossing out Obama's energy investment plan and focusing on carbon pricing and regulation, Democrats allowed Republicans to quickly and easily frame the entire debate around increased energy prices and economic costs. That's a fight Republicans take up with relish -- and one they will surely win.
"Technology policy lies at the core of the climate change challenge. Even with a cutback in wasteful energy spending, our current technologies cannot support both a decline in carbon dioxide emissions and an expanding global economy. If we try to restrain emissions without a fundamentally new set of technologies, we will end up stifling economic growth, including the development prospects for billions of people.
Economists often talk as though putting a price on carbon emissions--through tradable permits or a carbon tax--will be enough to deliver the needed reductions in those emissions. This is not true. Europe's carbon-trading system has not shown much capacity to generate large-scale research nor to develop, demonstrate and deploy breakthrough technologies. A trading system might marginally influence the choices between coal and gas plants or provoke a bit more adoption of solar and wind power, but it will not lead to the necessary fundamental overhaul of energy systems.
For that, we will need much more than a price on carbon. ...
Economists like to set corrective prices and then be done with it, leaving the rest of household and business decisions to the magic of the market. This hands-off approach will not work in the case of a major overhaul of energy technology. We will need large-scale public funding of research, development and demonstration projects; intellectual property policies to promote rapid dissemination to poor countries; and the promotion of public debate and acceptance of new options. We will need to back winners, at least provisionally, to get new systems moving. "
An oldie but a goody from well-known economist and direct of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Jeffrey Sachs, April 2008 in Scientific American, "Keys to Climate Protection."
The Geithner-Summers banking plan has received much criticism (e.g. see Stiglitz and Johnson), but today Jeffrey Sachs issued one of the harshest critiques yet. Basically, the Geithner-Summers plan could allow banks to commit fraud by bidding on their own toxic assets and walking away with huge amounts of taxpayer money. Sachs sums it up here at the Huffington Post:
A new report from McKinsey & Co. warns a second major oil shock looms just over the horizon, ready to hit the global economy hard as soon as it begins to recover. McKinsey's analysts conclude that freeing our nation from oil price volatility will require "aggressive" investments in energy technology innovation, and there's no time to waste
McKinsey's analysts look at a variety of economic scenarios and warn that the global oil supply-demand balance will tighten as soon as the global economy begins to recover, as soon as 2010-2013 (depending on degree of global downturn). At that point, the global supply-demand situation will closely resemble the situation found in 2007 and the first half of 2008, when prices soared to over $140 a barrel, hitting pocketbooks and the global economy hard.
McKinsey predicts that a second oil price shock could cost the global economy $1.5 trillion or more, hitting us hard just as we're trying to stand back up again.
A major new climate bill hit the House of Representatives this week and was met with deft political maneuverings from Senate Republicans that could render cap and trade dead on arrival. The Breakthrough Institute team has the angles covered:
Jesse Jenkins says this new climate bill is proof of misplaced priorities as the leading green groups setting the climate agenda walk away from billions of dollars in critical clean energy investments in favor of regulations, standards and carbon pricing. See also "Climate Bill is All About the Coal Hard Cash" at Huffington Post and listen to Jenkins talk about the Markey-Waxmen bill on KPFA radio.
Meanwhile in the Senate, two Republican amendments may leave cap and trade with no where to go. In reaction to the House climate bill, the Senate this week voted 89-8 to preemptively reject any cap and trade bill that increases consumer energy prices and voted 98-0 to ensure that any climate bill protects middle-income taxpayers from any tax increases.
Michael Shellenberger sees these votes as the clearest rejection yet of the pollution pricing paradigm and examines the artful political maneuverings at play.
Ted Nordhaus is left worrying that the climate bill is on a crash course for compromise that will leave us stuck with the worst of both worlds: a climate policy lacking both a price signal sufficient to drive private investment anywhere near the scale we need and NO money for public investments in an RD&D strategy sufficient to make clean energy cheap.
Teryn Norris and Jesse Jenkins outline what Democrats can do to regain the political high ground and win the climate debate in this op ed, featured at Huffington Post. If Democrats want to win, they should quickly follow President Obama's lead by shifting the focus of climate legislation from pollution regulation to bold government investment in the clean energy economy.
While Congressional Democrats and leading green groups insist that what the public wants is cap and trade to deal with climate change, yet another poll was released today showing voters want investments in clean energy, not new taxes or regulations.
If I were a Republican, I'd be relieved to have climate legislation to attack right about now...
We are nowwitnessing the inevitable entailment of putting pollution caps and climate at the center of the political proposition.
Everyone is all for capping carbon until it comes time to pay for it. Then it is a consumption tax and few politicians and voters are prepared to support it. It inevitably leads to a debate centered on the costs and regulations, not the social benefits of the policy.
The Apollo approach, which puts the immediate social and economic benefits - a clean energy economy, energy independence, new industries that can create good jobs - at the center of the debate and uses modest carbon price revenues to pay for it has always been vastly more robust to the kinds of political attacks that we are seeing this week. The debate becomes about whether or not we are going to make these investments in America's future - not whether or not we are willing to take our medicine in order to avoid the end of the world. But making this move requires more than simply swapping out the picture of the polar bear on the front page of your newsletter for a picture of a construction worker. It requires taking the investment agenda seriously and making it the central objective of policy.
The choice that greens and sympathetic policy makers will have in the coming months will be whether to move to this kind of plan B or accept a cap and trade bill that is likely to provide neither a very significant price signal nor any serious money for RD&D.
As I mentioned yesterday, some stark political lines are being drawn in the Senate on cap and trade legislation. The Thune Amendment had 89 members of the Senate going on record opposing any increases to electricity or gasoline prices as a result of cap and trade legislation. In the Senate yesterday another important amendment to the Budget Resolution was approved unanimously, 98-0, sponsored by Senator Ensign (R-NV), chair of the Republican Policy Committee. Here is its text:
To protect middle-income taxpayers from tax increases by providing a point of order against legislation that increase taxes on them, including taxes that arise, directly or indirectly, from Federal revenues derived from climate change or similar legislation.
What does this amendment mean?
It means that money raised from cap and trade (or even a carbon tax) cannot lead to a net increase in the overall tax burden on the "middle class." What is "middle class"? According to Senator Ensign in a press release trumpeting the amendment, it includes those households earning less than $250,000 per year. Senator Ensign cites the President on this point, referring back to his campaign promises not to raise taxes on this group.
Politically and practically, this amendment could then mean that proponents of cap and trade will need to pursue an explicit "cap and dividend" approach with any such policy being tax neutral for those earning less than $250,000 per year. In other words, the costs of cap and trade will have to be fully borne by those earning above $250,000 per year. Some of the challenges of the distributional effects of cap and trade are discussed in recent CBO testimony (PDF). Whether or not legislation can be written that allows supporters to claim to have met the spirit of the Ensign Amendment, it is clear that the Amendment makes the political challenge that much more difficult.
The ability of Congressional legislation on cap and trade to result in actual emissions reductions was dealt a serious blow yesterday. An Amendment was introduced by Senator John Thune (R-SD) on the Budget Resolution and its text is as follows:
To amend the deficit-neutral reserve fund for climate change legislation to require that such legislation does not increase electricity or gasoline prices.
What is this? Climate change legislation cannot increase electricity or gasoline prices? The entire purpose of cap and trade is in fact to increase the costs of carbon-emitting sources of energy, which dominate US energy consumption. The Thune Amendment thus undercuts the entire purpose of cap and trade.
The draft Markey-Waxman climate bill is proof that the green groups leading the climate charge won't fight for investments in clean energy technologies and a new energy economy. Instead, they'll throw these critical investments overboard to preserve precious regulations and an increasingly compromised "cap" on carbon.
As Beltway insiders have repeatedly "reminded" me, this is "just
a discussion draft," and its final form may be much different. But just
looking at what's in this bill so far -- and just as important, what's not -- paints a clear picture of misplaced priorities and a bill in critical need of some "course correction."
Even a cursory read of this "American Clean Energy and Security Act" (ACES) -- and I've read far more of this 648 page bill than I'd like! -- speaks volumes to the priorities of the various parties driving this debate so far - namely the greengroups and big industry players already cutting deals as part of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. This bill should be proof, once and for all, these leading greens will throw clean energy investments overboard to preserve precious regulations and an increasingly compromised "cap" on carbon.
In the clearest indication yet that a climate strategy requiring a high price on carbon is doomed to political failure, the Senate voted 89-8 to preemptively reject any cap and trade bill that increases consumer energy prices.
Republicans deftly succeeded in calling greens and Democrats on their bluff that cap and trade won't cost anything, winning yesterday an 89 to 8 vote on a resolution stating that any climate legislation must not raise gasoline or electricity prices. The Senate vote is timed to coincide with yesterday's release of a climate bill "discussion draft" in the House (more on that bill from the Breakthrough Blog coming soon).
The implications of this vote are that just eight out of 100 senators believe, and have the courage of their convictions, to openly state that fossil fuel prices should rise to deal with climate change. That is to say, there are only eight senators who agree with Thomas Friedman, EDF, NRDC, David Leonhardt, AEI, and all the others who believe that the most important, and perhaps only thing we should do to combat climate change and drive clean energy innovation is to set a price on carbon.
"Even today, the European position is that we should clamp down on regulations, ignoring the fact that the crisis was due not to a lack of regulation but rather the failure of regulators to stand up to powerful banks."
-- Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is also a co-founder of The Baseline Scenario.
