"With the release of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, the debate over climate change has noticeably shifted from arguments about the reality of human-induced climate change to a debate over how to address the problem."

You mean that more definitive science advanced the debate?!  You need to understand that science policy experts long ago determined that to be impossible.  Continuing to claim otherwise is just more proof of bitterness. :)

(Great post.  Thanks.)

Steve -

Given that all of the science in the Fourth Assessment Report is a couple of years old, it's not clear that it was "more definitive science" that advanced the debate. And given that the terms of the debate were shifting well in advance of the IPCC report's release, it's also not clear to me that it was "more definitive science" that advanced the debate. It's not clear to me what explains the shift, but the science on which it is based has been well understood for some time, and has changed little over the time period in which the debate has shifted.

I agree with everything here. My problem is, #3 basically amounts to a place-holder. [Insert political strategy here.]

I know you're not an expert in politics. Neither am I. Unfortunately, the folks who are experts at politics don't seem to care much about good climate change strategy. So it's left to us greens to try to hash out the politics.

It seems the greenosphere is forever producing these "Perfect Policy" manifestos (yes, I'm guilty), while less attention is paid to practical political tactics to make things start happening. For instance, it may be that we need a carbon tax and cellulosic ethanol research. In a Perfect Policy document, they'd each get a line item. But in terms of political tactics, it's clear that ethanol already has tons of political momentum and many wealthy backers, whereas a carbon tax is going to be a tougher sell. So we should focus on the carbon tax, not because it's necessarily better, but just because it needs our support.

Again, this isn't to say we shouldn't think about ideal policy. I love doing it. But one gets the sense that, oh, conservatives for instance don't just dream about a flat tax. They spend a lot of time thinking about what concrete, incremental, local and state-level initiatives and laws they can get passed in the current political climate -- things that move us toward a flat tax. They're always pushing and scheming. I feel like we don't scheme enough. Where are the green schemers?

Sorry this comment is incoherent -- I'm hurrying to do something else.

www.grist.org

What I saw happen is the media declared the IPCC report definitive when it was released, and the report said that the warming we're seeing is caused by human activities. It was like suddenly everyone knew and accepted that climate change is real despite the fact that they knew it was real before then. Okay, it's real, now we have to figure out what to do is kind of the feeling I'm getting from "average" people I hear talking about it. The report, and the general acceptance of its findings, has made it much more difficult to ignore climate change or try to stay in denial of it. Now we have to help people take the next steps. First to show that, indeed, the report is very conservative and things will probably be worse and happen sooner, and then to implement plans and strategies at all levels. We need to use the report and move beyond it to get where we need to go. And, of course, sunflower is also right :)

Dave-

In the book, we do lay out the various options for how to structure an agreement: 1) universal participation (e.g., Kyoto/UNFCCC), 2) bilateral agreements (e.g., U.S. and China), 3) a "coalition of the willing" (e.g., Europe + Japan + a few others).  In our opinion, option 3 was the best.

It was late and the post was getting too long so I just left that discussion out.  Perhaps that would make for a good post ...

Thanks!

>I agree with everything here. My problem is, #3 basically amounts to a place-holder. [Insert political strategy here.]

>I know you're not an expert in politics. Neither am I. Unfortunately, the folks who are experts at politics don't seem to care much about good climate change strategy. So it's left to us greens to try to hash out the politics.

You've been hinting around for weeks that you have something in mind, David. So isn't it about time you posted it?

Huh? I am very confused about the meaning of your post. Can you elaborate?

I'm afraid I've got nothing up my sleeve in that dept., though a few other posts have been brewing for a while. Political tactics can be a bear, since everyone has an opinion about them and very few people are in a position to test the ideas. Part of me thinks we all should just join Komanoff and lobby for a carbon tax. I'm not certain it's the right thing, but at least it's something concrete and simple. The green community rarely speaks with one voice, whereas the VRWC seems, at least from my POV, eerily coordinated.

www.grist.org

A carbon tax with a slow ramp up would be like sludge for market incentives, and take years, but it would focus the political mind.

I know next to nothing about politics and religion, something like frontal lobe and temporal lobes.  Watching the politics of carbon mitigation will be interesting.   Good luck and God's speed.

Atreyger,
.

I believe that Graham Cowan is meaning to imply here that sin-taxation creates public-servant conflicts-of-interest that ultimately lead to counterintuitive outcomes. For example, a special tax on widgets (passed because a certain committee has found that widgets are sinful) makes public servants back policies that encourage widget-use.

The counterintuitive aspect of this thesis arises from the fact that people typically perceive a specific tax as something that should result in reduced specific consumption, since it makes a certain specific something cost more for consumers. A way that conflicted public-servants might then actually encourage widget use would be to back policies that pathologically-regulate otherwise economically-feasible competitors to widgets. Another way that conflicted public servants might actually encourage widget use would be to back policies that encourage development of economically infeasible competitors to widgets.

Here is a real-world example: in a given society, coal-fired electricity becomes heavily taxed. The end result, many years after the heavy taxes are passed, is that more coal than ever is being burned to make electricity. What happened? The public servants who benefited from coal taxation hampered the nuclear renaissance (nuclear being a feasible competitor against coal and therefore the enemy) by backing pathological regulation of nuclear power, and encouraged wind-power and energy-conservation (these being being infeasible competitors against coal and therefore friends) by backing subsidy programs designed to encourage them.

Doesn't sound like a real world example. At least coal is not heavily taxed in the U.S. : if it was coal powered electricity would not be the cheapest electricity you can buy. Maybe you are thinking of some other country.

Nonetheless, even if it does not apply to coal I can think of some real world examples. Green taxes and sin taxes, if directed to fund programs ultimately do develop a constituency (both inside and outside of government) that prefers the revenues to reducing the behaviors the tax is supposed to discourage. California, where extensive use of hybrids has started to lower gas taxes compared to projections, is considering switching to a per mile tax to keep revenues up. In Washington  State, I remember lobbying for more logging because logging revenues help fund schools here.

The answer is I think one of the alternatives the carbon tax foundations supports: directing revenues from a carbon tax as a direct check made out to every citizen, rather than going to fund any particular program - the way revenues from the Alaska pipeline are directed directly to Alaska citizens. I come to that conclusion reluctantly, because revenue from use of a finite sink is essentially a drawing down on capital - and in a platonic world would be directed towards replacement capital. But I think the unintended consequences of using carbon charges as a tax revenue source, and especially the political constituencies that would spring up around keeping those revenues up argue for direct disbursal of that money. Not to mention that redirecting that money directly back to the consumers who ultimately pay it mitigates the regressiveness of the tax in way that is more immediately visible than expenditures on any program, no matter how worthy.

Thanks for the explanation, Nucbuddy, and even though I didn't like your example (it seemed biased, no?), I can appreciate the idea of a revenue source from a 'sin tax'. That becomes an interesting question then, what if the public servants aren't misguided? For example, New York City's cigarette tax is the largest in the country, maybe even the world; people pay up to $8-9 for a pack. In the same time, smoking was banned from indoor areas: maybe the public servants do not view it as a revenue, because then they would actually promote smoking indoors. Further, people may not quit smoking, but they do smoke less, consuming less of the product.

But this is an even more important point: a small sin tax for a widget allows more consumers to purchase widgets, so that there is a total of more widgets sold and produced. Supposing that the sin tax on widgets becomes at least somewhat prohibitive on the purchasing power of the consumers, the increase in the tax for widgets equates with less widgets sold (# widgets smalltax x tax /widget SHOULD= # widgets largetax x tax /widget) Mathematical laws bear that it's impossible to increase both sides of the equation. The tax base does not change, but less widgets are sold, achieving the initial goal. Also, of course the model changes with NO tax (or tax = 0), but since everything is taxed in some way, there will never be a situation in which the transaction of widgets between producers and consumers is untaxed.

That is, of course, unless widgets are so addictive or such an absolute necessity, that other sectors of the economy suffer due to people spending more money on buying widgets(that's where the SHOULD comes in). As I recall, someone of great importance has said that USA is addicted to fossil fuels. I guess the question becomes, how addicted? And another, how necessary? We are very locked into the fossil fuel economy in terms of infrastructure and autos.

Yeah, I remember now, Gar. I should stop promising things.

The short answer is you do it by influencing power centers. You horse trade, you get key legislators -- usually those with something to gain -- on your side, you spin the D.C. press, you learn to pitch public policies wherein the benefits are visible (to at least one powerful constituency) and the costs are hidden, you get a few powerful business interests on your side with sweetheart deals. It's domestic realpolitik. Bush partisans know all too well that you don't have to have a groundswell of popular support to get fairly radical policy passed.

www.grist.org

Madness, your world has only a few years left of viable agriculture..... and you will do nothing except talk your time away.

Oh well, LIFE is in it's death throes already so I expect a rotting future is all one can expect.

No use even posting this post is there.

>The short answer is you do it by influencing power centers. You horse trade, you get key legislators -- usually those with something to gain -- on your side, you spin the D.C. press, you learn to pitch public policies wherein the benefits are visible (to at least one powerful constituency) and the costs are hidden, you get a few powerful business interests on your side with sweetheart deals. It's domestic realpolitik. Bush partisans know all too well that you don't have to have a groundswell of popular support to get fairly radical policy passed.

Umm you need a fair amount of power to begin to do this. You horsetrade? You horsetrade what? You spin? A lot easier to do if you own half the media and terrify the other half. Getting  a few businesses on your side - great if you can get them enthusiastically on your side, and not just holding your coat and providing moral support. Also if you have a few businesses on your side, and the other side has a lot of businesses on your side you still are not going to win without popular support.

My comment about this approach is the same a practical politician I knew made about Machiavelli. You can argue about what he really meant, and about how practical his advice was for the prince of an Italian city-state in his era. A peasant or a merchant who tried to follow the same advice, no matter how you interpret it would have ended up hanged, or impaled, or burnt or facing some other form of execution.  Someone at the top of the power heap has options open to them someone who is not among the richest of the rich and most powerful of the powerful does not have.

I've nothing against intelligent use of realpolitik. But what you can do with realpolitik depends on how much power you have. Without popular support you don't have a lot to trade with.

Also in terms of spin, for example the clear benefits, and hidden costs thing: not as easy for you to pull as Bush. The main stream media is not afraid of you, unlike spinners on the right. If you neglect to mention a cost, I'm sure the main stream press will be glad to point it out. If they fail to note it at first, I'm sure the right wing spin machine will call it to their attention. You can't get away with the same stuff someone like, say, John McCain can.

While I applaud Andrew for mentioning adaptation as point #5, there is a glaring lack of discussion about it in subsequent posts -- and in the overall debate over our response to climate change.  While mitigation in the form of carbon taxes or cap-and-trade obviously warrants serious discussion, so to does adaptation.  To offer it no or just cursory consideration is, I believe, an entirely Western/developed world-centric stance.  

Briefly, adaptation's place in the debate over our response needs to be elevated to the same level as mitigation for the following reasons.  First, it seems that we are resigned to see potentially large impacts from climate change under even the most drastic emissions reductions scenarios.  Therefore, adaptation is not only desirable but absolutely necessary.  Second, to ask developing countries such as India to cut emissions (and likely energy use) while attempting to meet the Millennium Development Goals (and other poverty reduction programs) is unconscionable and impractical.  Third, adaptation makes sense across a wide range of scenarios; that is, even if certain impacts of climate change never end up happening, adaptation measures still make sense and contribute to other societal goals such as sustainable development and vulnerability reduction. Finally, and we can debate about this, adaptation requires action and local and regional levels which may help bring home some of the impacts of climate change.  In so doing, this may also help generate additional investments in fighting climate change -- namely, mitigation.

I implore you to response to this and get the debate over adaptation started. It is vital.

Phd Student, IGERT Urban Ecology Fellow, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University

Thad - asking developing nations to cut emissions does conflict with developing or improving the lives of their people if the rich nations pay for it.

Secondly - much adaptation can be done only in response to problems as they occur. Not all of them of course - improving public health systems, putting in better water systems (many poor people have no access to clean water), and improving efficiency in water use. But agriculture is going to have to adapt to warmer conditions. But you can only adapt to them as they occur. Ask any agricultural expert what right crop will be for BC Canada or Indonesia 20 years from now. They won't be able to tell you, because we don't know how hot or how dry t hose places will be. So mitigation has to be the focus of attention - because there is more we can do at the moment about mitigation that about adaptation. Again I'm saying we should put zero effort in adaptation. There are concrete things we can implement today, and a lot of research needed. But if you add up everything we can do to adapt in advance of the conditions we are adapting to it adds up to a lot  less than the potential for mitigation.  (Also a lot of adaptation is mitigation as well. One of the most important mitgations we can make is to turn agriculture from a net emitter of greenhouse gases to a net sequesteror. This will help build soil; better soil will help farms survive harsher climate conditions.

First sentence should have read:

Thad - asking developing nations to cut emissions does NOT conflict with developing or improving the lives of their people if the rich nations pay for it.

but doesn't the chart at the top of the page presume that atmospheric CO2 levels remain a function of emissions --- that is, that we can reach those levels of CO2 without triggering positive feedback loops that take the atmospheric concentration out of our hands entirely?

In Fred Pearce's great new book "With Speed and Violence," he makes the point that the IPCC, rather than being "radical," is actually quite conservative because it does not model likely runaway feedback loops (ocean saturation leading to termination of ocean carbon sequestration and possibly frozen undersea methane releases, tundra melting leading to enormous above ground methane releases, etc. etc.)

"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."