With the new IPCC report finally out in the world, climate activists can again focus on action. What do we do now?
I say, first let's cut through the defeatism that's posing as realism, as in this article in yesterday's L.A. Times, "Game over on global warming?":
Everybody in the United States could switch from cars to bicycles.
The Chinese could close all their factories.
Europe could give up electricity and return to the age of the lantern.
But all those steps together would not come close to stopping global warming.
Really? I ran the numbers and came up with a 17-18% reduction in global CO2 emissions (4.3% from zapping U.S. cars, 7.7% for closing Chinese factories, 5.6% for converting European electricity to wind).
Hasn't the Times heard of harm reduction? Every percentage drop in emissions will translate into some mitigation in sea level rises, violent storms, and other harms from global warming.
No less vexing, for this writer, was Robert Reich's blog reaction to the IPCC report. The former Clinton Secretary of Labor hadn't even finished his lead paragraph when he threw in the towel: "You can forget a carbon tax any time soon."
C'mon, Bob. Don't mourn, organize. Surrendering just when a political critical mass is assembling to attack carbon emissions is, well, un-American. A carbon tax is essential, and the work of coaxing the public and pressuring policymakers has to start now. There's just no alternative.
Reich advocates a temporary windfall profits tax on oil companies to finance R&D in non-fossil based fuels. But what's holding back renewables isn't a lack of know-how, but the lack of a valuation of climate damage in the prices of fossil fuels. Reich's windfall tax might have meant something in the Clinton years. Now it would be a hollow, ineffectual gesture.
The Big Green groups have a different answer. Their flirtation with carbon cap-and-trade systems has turned into a torrid love affair. NRDC and Environmental Defense have teamed with ten giant industrial corporations, including GE, Alcoa, and PG&E, to push carbon cap-and-trade legislation through Congress.
What's wrong with that? A lot.
- Cap-and-trade won't diminish the price volatility that discourages investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy (whereas a carbon tax will lend predictability to energy prices).
- The workings of cap-and-trade systems are extraordinarily complex and will take years to iron out and start up (carbon taxes could be implemented much sooner).
- The costs of cap-and-trade systems are likely to become a hidden, regressive tax as dollars flow to market participants (carbon tax revenues can be returned to the public through rebates or progressive tax-shifting).
What Big Green likes about cap-and-trade is that it disguises the costs. But that is precisely what's wrong with it.
A carbon tax brings the cost of climate change to bear on every individual buying decision we millions make. Which is why, with Dan Rosenblum, an environmental lawyer and a good friend, I launched the Carbon Tax Center last month.
America is finally ready for an honest discussion of carbon taxing. Dan and I formed CTC to advance this discussion and provide intellectual and practical support to help carbon tax proponents grow into an irresistible civic force.
We are mindful of the obstacles to changing U.S. tax policy. (Our insistence on revenue-neutral and progressive tax-shifting is partly a response to this difficulty, though it is also rooted in our commitment to economic justice.) We've worked in both government and the public-interest sector, and we know how hard it can be to effect change.
But we also know that there's no surer way to lose than giving up before the fight has begun.
So we say to you, Grist reader, eco-citizen: visit our website and join the carbon tax movement. You have nothing to lose but ... well, actually, you have nothing to lose at all. And you have a world to win -- or rather, to win back.
Comments
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pielke Posted 3:39 am
07 Feb 2007
You should check the accuracy of this statement, it is scientifically incorrect, or at least incomplete:
"Every percentage drop in emissions will translate into some mitigation in sea level rises, violent storms, and other harms from global warming."
A reduction in the rate of emissions will only buy time, it will not have a proportional impact on those impacts, "harm reduction" as you say.
I discuss this here:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files ...
Further details here:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/cli ...
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GRLCowan Posted 4:10 am
07 Feb 2007
Those of us with this pleasant connection are more influential than those without; thus, more carbon tax revenue will make us more adamant in opposing fossil fuel conservation and substitution, although typically we do not acknowledge this intention.
(It is, however, virtually an acknowledgement to say that the fossil fuel industry is subsidized by government, by implication net subsidized, a lie too blatant to be believed by anyone who has seen highway speed limit enforcement. Or to recommend that gas tax revenue be used to fund conservation and alternative energy, as if, had that revenue been left to Exxon-Mobil to collect and keep, they might do the same.)
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Oxygen expands around B fire, car goes
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Zarkov Posted 5:40 am
07 Feb 2007
DANGER do not remove the so called greenhouse gases.
To unravel the problem of Global Climate Change will require considerable thought. The problem is not greenhouse gas but a HOT ocean and the oil membrane.
To rapidly remove the oil membrane (as if we can) will bring on a disaster, read massive Ice Age, as never seen before.
To remove the green house gases will lead to a precipitous cooling....
To leave the climatic situation as it is will only make the final consequences much more bleak.
We must play one climatic change cause against the other and slowly bring the health of the atmospheric climate and the sea, back to a natural state and in equilibrium.
The science projected by the world's leaders is dismal and dangerous.
But Mental/Metal poisoning is rife and I am sure no one will listen to sanity.
Too bad, this Earth was a nice place to live.
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Geoffrey Johnson Posted 6:14 am
07 Feb 2007
The consequences of global warming described in the IPCC and Stern reports show that time is at a soaring premium. So what's wrong with a mitigation strategy that will "only buy time"? Time is the vehicle of innovation and adaptation. Under the guise of scientific formalism, your clarification supports the trend of political fatalism criticized above. Let's not hide the value which lies between the present moment and the (threatened) arrival of climate tipping points. In the interim, technology will advance and new generations will be born. That's our return on a reasonable carbon tax.
GJ
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pielke Posted 6:33 am
07 Feb 2007
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sunflower Posted 6:36 am
07 Feb 2007
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Gar Lipow Posted 6:44 am
07 Feb 2007
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GRLCowan Posted 9:42 am
07 Feb 2007
Also not going unnoticed is their very economical way of saying "tax carbon" when a more precise and accurate turn of phrase would be, "tax carbon more.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
how motoring gains nuclear cachet
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Mike Sander Posted 2:26 pm
08 Feb 2007
I'm also not sure I follow you exactly on how the benefits of taxing carbon would have us support it. I certainly support cigarette taxes, but this does not make me want to smoke. Could you please explain it more precisely? Thanks!
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GRLCowan Posted 2:44 pm
15 Feb 2007
Does it perplex you that speed limits are not very strongly enforced? It seems to me they once were strongly enforced, but that this changed sometime in the early or mid-70s. Does anyone remember a different time for this to happen, or that it didn't happen?
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around B fire, car goes
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