This will, hopefully, be the last post devoted to debunking Shellenberger & Nordhaus.
As noted, S&N spend far more time attacking the environmental community and Al Gore (and even Rachel Carson!) than they do proposing a viable solution. Worse, they don't even attack the real environmental community -- they create a strawman that is mostly a right-wing stereotype of environmentalists.
Now it turns out they support the exact same thing the environmental community -- and energy technologists like me -- have been pushing for many years: an aggressive and intelligent regulatory strategy coupled with a significant increase in the energy R&D budget.
To my great surprise, they have taken up my challenge and endorsed Barack Obama's terrific climate plan. So why are we fighting? Only because S&N keep attacking, keep trying to rewrite history.
S&N claim over and over again that environmentalists don't support increases in clean energy budgets. They even claim I don't support an increase in the budget of the very office I ran at the Energy Department -- and that "'experts' like Romm" shift our analysis "after the political winds changed direction." Silly (and petty).
In this post, I will set the record straight.
Do S&N believe they are the only ones who have been campaigning for more funding on clean energy and that no one else deserves credit?
They want to rewrite history to create a phony debate, apparently, so they can look like contrarians and stir interest in their work.
I have never met an environmentalist or energy expert who wasn't committed to increasing the clean energy budget -- I myself have been fighting for major increases for two decades. We just never thought it was the most important thing -- obviously neither does Obama, or else he wouldn't have included every regulation and mandate favored by environmentalists (and energy technologists). Nobody would include a regulation or mandate that isn't absolutely necessary -- as S&N like to point out, they aren't politically popular.
(You may ask, if, contrary to what S&N claim, environmentalists have been pushing for much higher clean energy budgets for years, why aren't the budgets much higher? The surprising answer to that question below.)
But for $150 billion over 10 years, S&N are apparently willing to set aside their previous distrust of fuel economy standards and tough emissions caps. They are the ones whose views have shifted radically over the years as the political winds have changed.
Who knew the differences between me and them were purely rhetorical -- they dislike Gore, Carson, and environmentalists who point out the dangers of global warming, whereas I like those folk a great deal. They want all the credit for pushing a positive solutions-based approach to climate, whereas I want to spread the credit around to those who actually deserve it.
S&N's core argument is that environmentalists only preach doom and gloom and sacrifice, and that solving global warming ...
... will require a more optimistic narrative from the environmental community. Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, like Silent Spring, was considered powerful because it marshaled the facts into an effective (read: apocalyptic) story ...
In promoting the inconvenient truth that humans must limit their consumption and sacrifice their way of life to prevent the world from ending, environmentalists are not only promoting a solution that won't work, they've discouraged Americans from seeing the big solutions at all. For Americans to be future-oriented, generous, and expansive in their thinking, they must feel secure, wealthy, and strong.
Gore has never promoted such an inconvenient truth -- they should read his book or listen to his speeches -- and indeed I don't know any major environmentalist or environmental group that has promoted such a message. Just spend some time on the climate websites for NRDC, Environmental Defense, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace. They all embrace a clean energy future. S&N might even read my 1999 book, Cool Companies: How the Best Businesses Boost Profits and Productivity by Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions. I guess we all missed the "pain and sacrifice" memo.
Do S&N seriously believe that Obama would be embracing a mandated return to 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and an 80% cut by 2050 if the apocalyptic message of Gore and the environmental community had not been so persuasive? Are S&N suggesting that the politically-savvy Obama has been able to put on the table every necessary regulation and mandate simply because he threw in $150 billion for technologies? Be serious.
Or is it just possible that environmentalists were right all along? That once people realized how serious global warming is, they would embrace big solutions, including regulatory ones.
S&N claim:
The regulation-centered approach is thus doomed to fail in one way or another: Price carbon too high and risk economic consequences and political backlash; price it too low, and dirty-energy sources will not cost enough to make clean energy cost-competitive.
Yet Obama's proposal is nothing if not regulation centered. Indeed, his plan has more regulations and mandates and standards than any plan I've ever seen.
S&N have to rewrite history to make their case that they have been voices crying in the wilderness for clean energy funding. They claim:
The absence of an effective lobby for clean energy explains, in part, why public investment in energy research and development in the United States dropped from an already modest $8 billion in 1980 to $3 billion in 2005.
Maybe that is a small part of the reason -- but S&N's point in "The Death of Environmentalism" was that we need a new environmental paradigm because the old one -- regulations like CAFE and cap-and-trade -- had not succeeded. What S&N apparently don't understand is that the reason we don't have much higher clean energy budgets is not that environmentalists didn't push for them, but ... drumroll, please ... that conservatives fought them bitterly and spread disinformation about the climate problem, undercutting the urgency for action. Indeed, conservatives have repeatedly tried to shut down the Department of Energy's applied research effort and the whole DOE.
S&N write that U.S. R&D spending "dropped from an already modest $8 billion in 1980 to $3 billion in 2005," but that is doubly misleading. First, $8 billion in 1980 is not modest -- it was more than double what the rest of the world was spending combined. Second, that drop didn't really occur over 25 years as they suggest -- the vast majority occurred over three years when President Reagan came in and gutted President Carter's programs for efficiency and renewables, disparaging them as government boondoggles and unnecessary interference in the marketplace.
President Clinton began increasing the budget the instant he took office, but once the Gingrich Congress came in with its passionate hatred of all applied energy research -- S&N should read some of the hearings I testified at in those days -- we were playing a strictly defensive game, trying to save the entire clean energy budget from being zeroed out. I don't remember S&N speaking up back then for those budgets.
Because of an aggressive effort by the administration (thank you, Al Gore) and a strong effort by many of us at DOE to make the case that clean energy research had great value to the nation, coupled with aggressive lobbying by the environmental community (which S&N appear completely unaware of), we actually kept the clean energy R&D budget from falling significantly, when Gingrich and his allies wanted to zero out the whole enterprise. That is why clean energy funding is as low as it is.
Ignorantly, S&N write:
How might history have been different had environmentalists and their political allies 20 years ago proposed that the nations of the world make a massive, shared investment in clean energy, better and more efficient housing development, and more comfortable and efficient transportation systems?
Here is where S&N are very confused. History wouldn't have been much different, because such a proposal in 1987, during the Reagan administration, would have accomplished nothing. It would have been decried as a big-government, pork-barrel, tax-and-spend liberal plan and disappeared into political oblivion. Same in 1995.
I have always believed that the public sector clean energy budget should be much, much higher, but what I learned from the 1990s was that, politically, it was going to be at least as difficult as CAFE or cap-and-trade. And of course, it is much less important than increasing private sector clean energy spending through intelligent regulations, since that could be 10 to 100 times more money.
S&N need to rewrite history, because that's the only way they can make their argument that environmentalists are pain and sacrifice scare-mongers with no positive vision and no political savvy.
S&N also seem painfully unaware of the role conservative strategist Frank Luntz has played in co-opting the technology message from the Democrats. As I explained in my book and my blog, Luntz figured out that his side couldn't be seen as opposing all action on global warming. He also knew -- again contrary to S&N's claim -- that Democrats and environmentalists had been pushing the pro-technology, positive message. In his famous 2002 "Straight Talk" memo on climate-change messaging he writes:
Technology and innovation are the key in arguments on both sides. Global warming alarmists use American superiority in technology and innovation quite effectively in responding to accusations that international agreements such as the Kyoto accord could cost the United States billions. Rather than condemning corporate America the way most environmentalists have done in the past, they attack us for lacking faith in our collective ability to meet any economic challenges presented by environmental changes we make. This should be our argument. We need to emphasize how voluntary innovation and experimentation are preferable to bureaucratic or international intervention and regulation.
This is what I call the technology trap, where clean energy technology is used to delay action, rather than to foster action, on climate change.
Politically, it was genius. Democrats had been arguing for technology and regulation since both are needed -- whereas Luntz and his disciple Bush were saying you could have everything the Democrats promised, but without those annoying bureaucrats telling everyone what to do. "Technology" became Bush's energy and climate mantra, as I and others have explained many times.
You can also see why some of us were so annoyed when S&N came along repeating the Luntz/Bush message -- especially the dangerous myth that radical breakthrough technology is needed to solve the climate problem -- and claiming that environmentalists never believed in the clean energy message, leaving everyone with the impression that they opposed regulation, and that the pursuit of regulation was misguided, leading ultimately to the Death of Environmentalism. It is hard enough fighting disinformation from your political enemies, but virtually impossible when it comes from your supposed friends.
More than S&N, it is, ironically, Luntz and Bush that have helped open the door to the technology message, by repeating it over and over and over again. But if we actually do significantly increase public clean energy funding, it will only be because people believed the apocalyptic climate message that S&N disdain.
The country simply has too many problems, too little excess domestic spending dollars, and too much political power in the hands of anti-big-government conservatives for something like "creating the jobs of the 21st century" to be a winning argument, in and of itself, for $150 billion in new spending.
Bottom line, I don't think S&N bring anything new to the discussion except unjustified attacks on environmental strawmen that play into conservatives' hands. Now that they have endorsed Obama's plan, it is clear all our differences are rhetorical. That isn't worth much more ink.
Comments
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:30 am
13 Oct 2007
The reason I distrust Gore and Obama is they seem intimately tied up in the Corn lobby.
This lobby is horribly destructive to American Life in so many ways.
Our bodies are daily destroyed by corn syrup in terms of diabetes and strokes.
Our farmland is eviscerated by the highly inefficient corn farming methods.
Our land prices are driven higher and higher by the demand for ethanol crops.
That's a triple whammy that shows Gore-Obama are promoting a technology and lifestyle that has ruined and will continue to ruin the country.
What is more, the Global Warming scaremongering are only pushing us further and further along that 3 pronged trajectory. Thirdly, their denial of real alternatives like nuclear, and hydrogen, keep us addicted to Corn.
John Bailo
Sutext:
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:46 am
13 Oct 2007
"Ignorantly, S&N write: How might history have been different had environmentalists and their political allies 20 years ago proposed that the nations of the world make a massive, shared investment in clean energy, better and more efficient housing development, and more comfortable and efficient transportation systems?
Here is where S&N are very confused. History wouldn't have been much different, because such a proposal in 1987, during the Reagan administration, would have accomplished nothing. It would have been decried as a big-government, pork-barrel, tax-and-spend liberal plan and disappeared into political oblivion. Same in 1995."
Apparently Romm thinks the same thing would happen today. Apparently the only way that a "massive" investment program would be politically viable would be for a "massive" grassroots movement to be pushing for it, because evidently without that there is not much environmentalists can do -- at least that is what Romm seems to be saying (by the way, it is not clear that S&N themselves are pushing for that program, but it sounds good to me).
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sunflower Posted 4:13 am
13 Oct 2007
Think what big coal wants and that is what will happen - ineffective regulations and nonviable technologies.
Do the opposite - shut down coal.
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Sam Wells Posted 4:42 am
13 Oct 2007
As Sunflower hints, is it even possible to turn off the switch on coal and crude oil? It's like General Sanchez describing the Iraq Theater as a "nightmare."
I hear a lot about technology and policy manipulation, but I don't see the way to solve the puzzle. Face it, America is bankrupt now.
Onward through the fog
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Jason D Scorse Posted 5:38 am
13 Oct 2007
The only quibble I have is that there are serious voices in the environmental movement who are still talking about sacrificing our material standard of living- Bill McKibben for example with books like Enough. And many articles in the Sierra Magazine play into the negative stereotype of anti-business and anti-markets that the right uses. While much of the environmental movement has moved beyond the doom and gloom and anti-economic growth rhetoric not everyone has.
I teach environmental economics and blog at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:49 am
13 Oct 2007
It's not like what we WANT is energy.
What we WANT is products and services.
If we can get what we WANT with a dramatically reduced energy debt, then thats just fine.
_
But there are those who view intolerance as more important than moving forward.
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trock Posted 6:34 am
13 Oct 2007
It is not about the economics, science, engineering or good sense. It's about the politics. coal companies will have to be allowed to sell coal or they will fight back.
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:39 am
13 Oct 2007
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justlou Posted 8:13 am
13 Oct 2007
Many of us can consume far less than we do now and still maintain an adequate standard of living. Cornucopianism is not a sustainable vision.
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apsmith Posted 12:26 pm
13 Oct 2007
Shellenberger has a diary over at DailyKos on what they've been proposing:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/12/81036/678
I think the question of public vs. private investment in (1) R&D and (2) deployment (the major capital expense) is key. Government can do (1), but it will be simply inadequate, with any level of pressure in a democracy, to do (2) to a sufficient degree to resolve the problem. We need private capital, and we need a system that directs that private capital appropriately - regulations and guarantees like Germany's feed-in tariffs (or a better version of the US production tax credit) can do that.
But basically there's little difference in what they're proposing, and the only possible benefit of it is by "framing" it in an anti-environmentalist way, perhaps that's a real route to overcoming some of the grassroots irrational opposition still out there. It just seems designed to stir up trouble though.
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trock Posted 3:59 pm
13 Oct 2007
Instead of calling wind and solar energy renewable, we should call it supply side energy. Because that's also what it is. Any energy that we can get from the wind and solar means we use just that much less natural gas which can be then used to heat homes and industrial heating.
Lets's call a carbon tax a consumption tax. Conservatives would be all in favor a national sales tax over an income tax. Well, then great, make it a national sales tax, reduce income taxes, but have the national sales tax, tax consumption of fossil fuels.
renewable energy is now it's going to be supplyside energy.
carbon tax is now going to be a national sales tax. (and reduce income tax.)
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:24 am
14 Oct 2007
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jackburden Posted 1:59 am
14 Oct 2007
You could have avoided all your phony posturing and intellectually dishonest attacks if you had actually read the book you purport to review. You admitted over at TPM Cafe that this is more about getting revenge for their criticisms in 2004 than about talking about their book.
You know that S&N didn't come out for a plan that couples regulation and investment after Obama made his announcement or because you challenged them to do so. They did it explicitly in their book. Which was released over a week ago. (Although your hubris -- your willingness to take credit for an argument they made before you posted your "challenge" is kinda funny).
You should pick up a copy of the book and read it. You might enjoy it.
From the book:
"There is no doubt that the effort to reduce and stabilize global greenhouse gas emissions will require a major regulatory effort to make sure that everyone is playing by the same rules, provide regulatory certainty so that nations and businesses alike can play their investments, and increase the cost of fossil fuels relative to cleaner energy sources. But regulation cannot be the sole policy egg in the global warming basket, for without investments to encourage technological breakthroughs, we won't come close to achieving the emissions reductions we need to stabilize the climate." -- Page 119
That's precisely what you've "challenged" them to embrace. And you still attack them for being "dangerous." You've attempted, repeatedly, to attack them as pushing a strategy that only embraces investment (calling it an "investment-only strategy" on TPM Cafe). You've pushed the same thing they propose in the academic literature (remember Physics Today?). You challenge them to embrace the idea they articulate in their book. And when they do, you attack them again.
These series of posts are some of the most irrational arguments I've seen made in the blogosphere (which isn't exactly known for its rational discourse).
You seem to be driven by a kind of personal animus and hatred that is well beyond strange.
S&N make the point that we spend too much time debating past battles than we do dealing with the task at hand. And you're proving that point.
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:10 am
14 Oct 2007
Sure we'd collect all this money
But it would just go to subsidizing:
"Safe" Nuclear
"Sustainable" BioFuel Monocrops
"Clean" Coal Sequestration
"Zero Emission" Hydrogen
i.e. The fake solutions which cost billions upon billions, resulting in nothing.
The scary thing about governments picking technologies, is that they pick whatever "sounds best", rather than what actual is best.
_
The other problem with a tax versus a cap-trade is as mentioned, it would make it that if we substituted it from some other tax.
That ultimately if we shift away from carbon intensive energy use, that the tax revenues would decline.
Much in the same way that the gasoline tax pays for the upkeep of roads. As people get more fuel efficient vehicles, or vehicles that don't use any gasoline, they are using that road, but they aren't paying the tax. And as a result our roads go into disrepair.
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Sam Wells Posted 4:28 am
14 Oct 2007
But what you want is a structure that would increase over time because as population grows, you'll need more money to finance clean energy sources. Think of a program that expands in terms of serving needs and customers rather that one that contracts.
I think this might require several tools in your toolkit such as incentives, research, revised tax structures, regulations to require IRP, and all kinds of things - nothing should be left off the table unless it truly stinks. From there, it is a question of balance ... mid-term corrections ... and public / private coordination.
There are some "decision tree" software programs that can help define breakpoints in the proper balance of approaches. For example, one might identify trade-offs that would not be acceptable, such as consumer tax effect, impact on the GDP, and increases in pollution other than CO2. Such a process continually evolves and is nor a static one-time deal. /sam
Onward through the fog
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trock Posted 5:44 am
14 Oct 2007
There has always been a want to make money from non-carbon energy sources, but what has pushed it along in the United States is the stick of global warming and Al Gore's movie and 80 dollar a barrel oil, not because of a book by S&N. They are just idea opportunists in their criticism of environmental groups and provide amunition to the denier's and delayer's side with their criticism.
What's the worry about a carbon tax? That it would be successful and people would use less fossil fuel energy and then the amount of taxes that brings in would go down? And that would be a bad thing? Without a carbon tax, we would bring in no money from it, and fossil fuel use would not go down, wouldn't that be a worse thing? We should be so lucky to have the problem of worrying about the reductions in fossil fuels and reduced revenue from the tax. Increase the size of the tax. Remove the property tax for the first 100 000 dollar home pays for property taxes that we live in. What's the fear? The taxes at least would go down on people living in the United States and paid by the oil we don't buy from other countries and other fossil fuels we didn't exhaust. Alaska taxes the fossil fuel that is pumped their to pay their taxes and everybody in Alaska even gets money from it. does that make them stupid? We should tax fossil fuel first so we don't tax what we own. Tax what we buy to pay for government services, not the things we own.
In our state and I think most states, the gasoline tax does not pay for all of the cost of roads, only a portion. Your property tax probably makes up for most of the rest.
You're right to worry about money going into some of those money pit energy sources, like nuclear, biofuels, hydrogen or whatever. Government should limit all subsidies to that type of thing and only fund research that's ultimately available to all. The money from a carbon tax should go into the general government fund, just like income or sales taxes now, especially if we do a tax trade by reducing those taxes. Energy use should not be subsidized, it's not a prime use like education, housing or public safty. It needs to be made more efficient and a way to do that is pay some of our government sevices bill with it.
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lorna salzman Posted 1:17 pm
27 Oct 2007
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