One of the most contentious of climate crocks is the role of water vapor in climate change. And climate deniers are always trying to fog the issue. But don't be scared, Crock of the Week is here, to help make sure you don't get sucked in.

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The U.S. Chamber needs to get its story straight

The new wave of urban farming (and fresh food from small spaces!)

Feed the world sustainably by 2050? Yes, we can!

The U.S. Chamber seems to be going to great lengths these days persuade Congress that it really wants to help pass climate legislation. But a very different message is coming through its blogs, tweets, and unscripted comments.

We think everyone should know what else the U.S. Chamber is saying, so we have updated our "WhoDoestheUSChamberRepresent.org" website with our latest Politico ad, which is running today.

The ad focuses on the Chamber's recent contradictory and confusing statements about climate legislation:

8/25/09: U.S. Chamber senior staff tells the LA Times it seeks a "Scopes Monkey Trial" to question whether global warming poses a human health threat.

9/29/09: The Chamber denies that "we deny the existence of any problem" and says its critics are "dead wrong" in a press release.

10/26/09: U.S. Chamber President and CEO, Tom Donohue, tells Politico "Is the science [of global warming] right? Is the science not right? I don't know."

11/03/09: The U.S. Chamber sends a letter to the Senate saying it "believes climate change is an important issue for this Congress to address" and commends "Senators Kerry and Graham for their recent [call for] comprehensive climate legislation."

11/03/09: The U.S. Chamber later tweets that Congress should reject legislation with the "top-down approach of targets and timetables..."

11/06/09: The U.S. Chamber insists its 11/03/09 letter articulates the Chamber's "position for the last two years and only represents a change to those who have willfully misrepresented it in the past" in a blog post by Bruce Josten, the letter's author.

I have discussed these claims and statements at greater length in blog posts here and here.

In those posts I also raise the following questions, which might help the U.S. Chamber get its story straight. Or at least, consistent:

This post originally appeared on Pete's Switchboard blog.

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AP: Since 1997 “climate change has worsened and accelerated”

In other UK news: “Rain like this happens once every 1,000 years”

Adding a bit more data to food system reformers' arguments, a new study led by Germany's prestigious Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research takes on the question of whether we can "feed the world" while preserving the planet come 2050. Short answer: Yes!

Researchers modeled various agricultural styles, growth patterns, and diets. Here's what they say:

Despite pushes from agribusiness to intensify farming to feed a growing global population that is expected to reach over nine billion by 2050, the researchers found that a diet equivalent to eating meat three times a week would allow forests to remain untouched, animals to be farmed in free-range conditions, and greener farming methods to be used.

With as many people obese in the West as malnourished in poor countries -- roughly a billion of each -- distributing protein more fairly is also an opportunity to tackle global health problems, the report points out. 

Oh, didn't I mention that we'd have to eat a bit less meat? But at least there's no need to go all Jonathan Safran Foer, so that's something, right? There's also one other slight adjustment we'd need to make. I won't hold you in suspense for too long as to what it is. But believe me when I say that House Ag Chair Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) won't like it at all:

[F]eeding the world in a planet-friendly way means there will be little room to grow bio-fuel crops for cars. Feeding people must come first.

People before cars? How un-American. Ah, well. Can't win 'em all!

But seriously, this study made a real attempt to model all production styles and wasn't simply focused on finding a way to make sustainable practices win.  And even if skepticism remains, as it no doubt will, this study provides some solid evidence that the knee-jerk claim by so-called "realists" that sustainable practices simply can't address the needs of a growing population is, well, flat out wrong. In fact, the study suggests that if there is an unrealistic side in this debate, it's not the reformers'. Expecting the world to adopt to high meat-consumption patterns of Western countries appears to be impractical at best:

Global adoption of the ‘western high meat’ diet is only probably feasible with massive land use change. This would mean that an additional three million km2 of land would be needed for agricultural production, expanding into grazing land, with potential for serious detrimental environmental consequences. It would rely on a highly optimistic 54 percent increase in crop yields in line with the highest possible FAO forecasts. This approach would also rely on confining the vast majority of farm animals in inhumane intensive production systems.

What's most useful about this study is that it throws down some markers. Sure, we can try to push our current unsustainable system full-bore until 2050. But we really will use up the planet and probably fail in the attempt. It's worth asking yourself: Is steak a mere three times a week and an electric car in your garage really too high a price to pay for a sustainable future for everyone?

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For the 193 national delegations gathering in Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December, the reasons for concern about climate change vary widely. For delegations from low-lying island countries, the principal concern is rising sea level. For countries in southern Europe, climate change means less rainfall and more drought. For countries of East Asia and the Caribbean, more powerful storms and storm surges are a growing worry. This climate change conference is about all these things, and many more, but in a very fundamental sense, it is a conference about food security.

We need not go beyond ice melting to see that the world is in trouble on the food front. The melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets is raising sea level. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt entirely, sea level would rise by 23 feet. Recent projections show that it could rise by up to 6 feet during this century.

Rice harvesters in Vietnam. Photo courtesy jeremysabol via Flickr The world rice harvest is particularly vulnerable to rising sea level. A World Bank map of Bangladesh shows that even a 3 foot rise in sea level would cover half of the riceland in this country of 160 million people. It would also inundate one third or more of the Mekong delta, which produces half of the rice in Vietnam, the world’s number two rice exporter. And it would submerge parts of the 20 or so other rice-growing river deltas in Asia.

The worldwide melting of mountain glaciers is of even greater concern. The World Glacier Monitoring Service in Switzerland has recently reported the 18th consecutive year of shrinking mountain glaciers. Glaciers are melting in the Andes, the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, and throughout the mountain ranges of Asia.

It is the disappearing glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau that are of most concern, because their ice melt sustains the flow of the major rivers of India and China -- the Indus, Ganges, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers -- during the dry season. This ice melt thus also sustains the irrigation systems that depend on these rivers.

Yao Tandong, one of China’s leading glaciologists, who predicts that two thirds of China’s glaciers could be gone by 2050, says “the full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau region will eventually lead to an ecological catastrophe.”

It will also lead to a humanitarian catastrophe. China is the world’s leading producer of wheat. India is number two. (The United States is third.) In contrast to the United States, most wheat grown in China and India is irrigated. With rice, these two countries totally dominate the world harvest. The projected melting of these mountain glaciers in Asia represents the most massive threat to food security the world has ever seen.

The prospects for the harvests of wheat and rice, in these two countries, each with over a billion people, are of concern everywhere. We live in an integrated world food economy, one where harvest shortfalls anywhere can drive up food prices everywhere.

Rising temperature also directly affects crop yields. In a study published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, an international team of scientists confirmed the rule of thumb emerging among crop ecologists that for each 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature above the norm during the growing season, we can expect a 10 percent decline in wheat and rice yields. In a world with limited grain stocks -- a world that is only one poor harvest away from chaos in grain markets -- a crop-shrinking heat wave in a major grain-producing region could lead to politically destabilizing food shortages.

The delegates are gathering in Copenhagen against a backdrop of spreading hunger. For much of the late 20th century, the number of hungry people was declining, but it bottomed out in the late 1990s at 825 million. It then turned upward, reaching 870 million in 2005 and passing one billion in 2009. The combination of rising seas, melting glaciers, and crop-withering heat waves could push these numbers up even faster, forcing millions more families to try and survive on one meal a day.

We are in a race between political tipping points and natural tipping points. Can we cut carbon emissions fast enough to keep the melting of the Greenland ice sheet from becoming irreversible? Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save at least the larger glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau? Can we head off crop-withering heat waves of ever greater intensity? These are food security issues. This is what Copenhagen is about.

More information can be found in Chapter 1: “Selling Our Future” and Chapter 3: “Climate Change and the Energy Transition,” available for free downloading.

Additional resources at www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/plan_b_updates/2009/update84

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Carl Levin

Sen. Carl Levin is certainly concerned about climate change, but it’s unclear whether he will support the Kerry-Boxer climate bill. In this letter sent to a constituent in early November 2009, the senator stresses that other nations must commit to binding greenhouse-gas limits. He calls for a climate bill that will account for regional differences in the U.S., impose tariffs on goods from countries that haven’t committed to action, and preclude states from setting their own, tougher standards for automobile emissions (California, he’s talking to you): 

Dear [Constituent],

Thank you for contacting me regarding global climate change.

There is an overwhelming consensus among scientists that global warming is occurring and that human activity is causing it. As a result, we need to act with urgency to reduce the levels of global greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to prevent catastrophic impacts from occurring. During this century, scientists predict average temperatures could increase between 2 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit. Even small changes in average temperature could lead to extreme climatic events, such as heat waves, droughts and flooding. Portions of countries and entire islands could be lost to rising sea levels, crop yields could significantly decline and water shortages could occur. Over time, the impacts of climate change also could threaten our national security.

I believe the best way to address global warming is through an effective and enforceable international agreement that binds all nations to reductions in greenhouse gases, including China and India. It is imperative we find a way to bring them and other large emitters into a binding agreement to control greenhouse gas emissions. If we do not get these countries on board, what we do in the United States will only have a marginal impact on controlling global greenhouse gas emissions and could lead to even more U.S.-based companies moving overseas.

While addressing global climate change presents a daunting challenge, it also provides economic opportunities. A number of studies suggest investment in clean energy could generate significant new employment opportunities. A June 2009 report released by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that between 1998 and 2007, jobs in clean energy grew at a national rate of 9.1 percent while traditional jobs grew by only 3.7 percent. In Michigan, clean energy jobs grew by 10.7 percent over the same period. By investing in research and development and advanced technologies, we can generate good paying jobs in the manufacturing and technology sectors.

On June 26, 2009, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES, H.R.2454) by a vote of 219 to 212. This legislation would establish a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system and includes a number of energy-related provisions, such as renewable electricity standards and energy efficiency requirements. On September 30, 2009, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S.1733). This bill is similar to the House bill in that it sets up a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system and provides incentives for the development of clean energy technologies. On November 5, 2009, this bill was approved by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

The Senate bill would cap greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates the Senate bill would result in a cost impact of approximately $100 per household, averaged over the 2010 to 2050 time period. Before climate legislation is debated by the full Senate, S. 1733 will be merged with legislation authored by four other Senate committees: Energy and Natural Resources; Agriculture; Finance; and Foreign Relations.

Several factors need to be taken into account as the Senate works to address climate change and our national energy policy. In my view, any climate legislation that is enacted must not only reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, but also ensure the protection of consumers and workers, which requires taking into account regional differences that exist in the United States. I will work to ensure that climate legislation does not unfairly impact American manufacturing and jobs, especially with regard to our international competitiveness. It also is vital to include a border provision to make sure other countries do not gain a competitive advantage by failing to address the issue. Because climate change is a global challenge, legislation should establish a single, national standard that precludes states from setting their own standards, particularly for mobile sources.

Finally, the legislation should include targets and timetables that also are technologically achievable. On August 6, 2009, I sent a letter, along with several other Senators, to the President outlining many of these concerns.

As the Senate continues to craft climate change and energy legislation, I will be sure to keep your views in mind. Thank you again for writing.

Sincerely,
Carl Levin

Do you know what your own senators think about climate legislation?  Ask them, then tell us what you find out.

Here’s more on Levin and climate, as written by Kate Sheppard on 21 July 2009:

Carl Levin is a Midwest, industrial-state Democrat with concerns about the economic impacts of climate legislation, but he thinks something needs to be done about global warming.

“Global climate change is occurring and swift action is needed to protect our planet for future generations,” he says on his Senate website.

Levin wants climate legislation to include funding for advanced auto technologies like hybrids and hydrogen vehicles and advanced biofuels—no surprise, as he represents Michigan. The House climate and energy bill dedicates $20 billion to electric vehicles and other advanced automotive technologies, thanks to the work of fellow Michigan Democrat John Dingell. It’s unclear whether those concessions will be enough for Levin.

Track the debate and take action >>>

Last year, Levin voted to bring the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act to a floor vote, but also signed a letter from 10 swing-vote Democrats saying he would have opposed final passage of the bill.

Do you know more about this senator’s stance on climate legislation?  Tell us.

Find out about other senators by clicking on their names in the right column.

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On Tuesday, the U.S. Chamber sent a letter to Sens. Boxer (D-Calif.) and Inhofe (R-Okla.) about the climate bill. It seemed to be singing a new tune on climate policy, leading Sen. Kerry to wonder whether the letter reflects a real change in the Chamber's position. 

While we welcome the U.S. Chamber's desire to sound more constructive, reading in between the lines -- and reading the lines themselves -- raises big questions about how much the Chamber's objectives have really changed -- setting aside their obvious need to strike a more conciliatory tone. Which prompts us to contemplate how we'll know when the Chamber does decides to engage the climate debate constructively.

The letter starts off with a more positive tone than many are used to the Chamber taking:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce believes climate change is an important issue for this Congress to address. The Chamber stands ready to work with Congress to resolve this issue in a bipartisan manner that recognizes regional differences, the state of the technology, and the compelling need for a solution that minimizes overall economic impact.

Hey, sounds good so far. Then the Chamber references the recent oped by Sens. Kerry and Graham, saying:

There are many good ideas out there that can serve as a solid, workable, commonsense, and realistic foundation on which to craft a bill. The Chamber commends Sens. Kerry and Graham for their recent New York Times editorial on the need for comprehensive climate legislation. The Chamber welcomes the call for a new conversation on how to address the issue, and believes their editorial can serve as a solid, workable, commonsense foundation on which to craft a bill. Many other important details are needed, but the Chamber agrees that the objectives outlined in that editorial, coupled with their clear recognition that "this process requires honest give-and-take and genuine bipartisanship," can move this important policy objective forward in a bipartisan manner that garners strong business community support.

Overall, the letter does a fine job of suggesting that the U.S. Chamber is prepared to take on a more constructive approach. But, here's where you have to read between the lines. The Chamber embraces several of the principles listed by Sens. Kerry and Graham, except for the one calling for "aggressive reductions in our emissions of the carbon gases that cause climate change."

So here's something that isn't new. The U.S. Chamber's criteria for climate policy traditionally exclude the main point of having one: reducing global warming pollution. The press release the Chamber issued about the letter really emphasizes the point, as Bruce Josten, the U.S. Chamber's executive vice president for government affairs, says:

The Chamber believes the Senate has an opportunity to promote a workable bottom-up plan that starts by addressing the fundamental building blocks-rather than the top-down approach of targets and timetables it has taken thus far.

And the Chamber tweeted this as well -- sending out this short message last night:

Josten on climate legislation -- need a workable bottom-up plan not top-down approach of targets and timetables.

Tweets are a good way to get a sense of what the messenger thinks is really important, since there's no room for beating around the bush. Which raises the question why, if the Chamber's main point is that it doesn't want top-down "targets and timetables," why did they exclude mention of that from their letter to the Senators?  

Digging in here, the Chamber's press release and tweet talk seem to be implying that we won't have the technologies we need to cut carbon emissions.  This is what's meant by their language on "state of the technology" and their call for a "bottom-up" and "building blocks" approach.  But analysts have repeatedly found that the goals in legislation are achievable with clean energy solutions, which is why EIA and EPA have documented that the costs are negligible because the building blocks exist today and the bill includes provisions to ramp up the use of low-carbon blocks (efficiency, renewables, ccs, even nukes are given a path). 

Is the chamber trying to draw up a seat at the table just so it can press a reset button by making phony claims about how the bills are actually designed? If the chamber wants to be taken seriously, it needs to start by being honest about what the bills actually do.

The letter also includes the Chamber's usual litany of reasons it will reject a climate bill, reasons which can be so broadly interpreted that they can be used to reject anything the Chamber staff decides it doesn't like.

Disappointingly then, the new letter raises as many questions as it answers. We can't answer those questions -- only the Chamber can, by its actions in the weeks ahead.

Now we do take heart that at least the Chamber recognizes the need to appear be constructive on this issue. But we're all ready to fast-forward and get to the point where the Chamber actually does engage in a constructive manner. But how will we know if we're getting there? If the Chamber starts addressing some of the following questions, it'll help us sort out the reality from the illusion:

Does the U.S. Chamber consider emission reduction targets and timetables to be essential to include or exclude from a climate bill?

If the U.S. Chamber thinks targets and timetables should be included, what does it believe should be the basis for setting emission reduction targets and timetables?

What emission reduction targets is the Chamber prepared to support and on what timetable?

When will the U.S. Chamber lay out an actual proposal for climate legislation?

We'll let you know what we hear.

This post originally appeared on Switchboard.

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Some scary prospects of where people are turning - geoengineering, the false solution that once seemed like science fiction, is actually being taken seriously. Seriously?

Diana Bronson, ETC Group

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

- Albert Einstein

As global climate negotiations in Barcelona enter into the last week of talks before December’s Copenhagen summit, there continues to be more aggravation than agreement amongst negotiators. Despite the litany of warnings about the devastation a failure in Copenhagen will cause – mass migrations, floods, worsening hunger and elimination of entire small island states – the most powerful countries in the world have failed to significantly reduce emissions, let alone commit to new targets or adequate funds to pay for adaptation. Unwilling to muster collective political will to dramatically reduce consumption, wealthy countries are looking for ways to continue business as usual.

The surprising announcement that the US Congressional Committee on Science and Technology will be holding hearings on geoengineering in Washington later this week has some participants in Barcelona wondering if the lack of collective political will on the part of industrialized countries has something to do with Plan B moving a whole lot faster than we thought.  Plan B is geoengineering: the intentional, large-scale plans to modify the climate and related systems.

Geoengineering technologies include, for example, schemes to simulate a volcanic eruption by shooting sulphur particles into the stratosphere to reflect the sun’s rays back to outer space. Other technologies whiten clouds to make them more reflective. Some geoengineers propose dumping iron particles in the oceans to feed algae that might soak up CO2. Others want to change hurricane paths and rainfall patterns.

This is not science fiction. In just the last year, high-profile and influential scientific bodies, including the U.S. National Academies and the UK Royal Society, have begun evaluating the pros and cons of different technological fixes. The UK Parliament has already held hearings on geoengineering, new research institutes are opening and public funds are being allocated to geoengineering research. In a bewildering turnaround, former opponents of action on climate change like the self-described “skeptical environmentalist” Bjørn Lomborg in Denmark and Lee Lane of the American Enterprise Institute have now jumped on the geoengineering spaceship, calling not only for more research but also for experimentation and deployment of these extreme techno-fixes.

While these developments remain below the public’s radar, we need to pay attention. Ties are tight between the research, corporate, and political players in geoengineering. To cite one example, Steven Koonin – the current Under Secretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy and former Chief Scientist at the world’s second largest oil company (BP) – recently led a group of ten scientists in thinking through the  “technicalities” of shooting sulphates into the stratosphere. Such high-risk interventions are being contemplated and global permission is unlikely to be asked in the current regulatory vacuum for geoengineering.

Geoengineering is not part of the ongoing negotiations at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – at least, not yet – but we must question the strategies of those refusing to make progress on a post-Kyoto plan. Are they waiting for conditions to ripen for a rollout of geoengineering? Was Gordon Brown disingenuous or just badly briefed when he said there was “no plan B” on climate change? His own Royal Society recently recommended the UK government invest £100 million for geoengineering research, assessing the possibilities precisely as  “Plan B.”

The belief that technology will save the world from climate change runs deep amongst government delegates in Barcelona.   Technology is virtually the only negotiating topic where some progress has been displayed, albeit with all the familiar battles over intellectual property.  And it is quite possible that the spin doctors will try to portray some modest agreement on technology in Copenhagen as a “success,” while the thornier issues of emission targets and money are set aside for “later.”  

We need to make sure that whatever comes out of Copenhagen strengthens the struggle for real climate justice and a sustainable path forward. If geoengineering becomes a silver bullet distraction, rich countries will have not only walked away from the Kyoto Protocol, they will have begun to abandon any semblance of a multilateral approach to the climate crisis.                               

For more information, see http://etcgroup.org/en/issues/geoengineering                                                                                                                                                                  

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The 2009 ice melt season has just been completed at the northern polar cap, and observations confirm that the decay of the arctic ocean ice cover is continuing a steady decline.

The last three melt seasons represent the 3 lowest summer ice areas in the satellite record.
Satellite measurements of total summer ice surface have been on a downward slope for 3 decades. In 2007, ice area suffered a spectacular and unpredicted slump. In the last two years, summer expanse rebounded from the catastrophic collapse, to mere precipitous decline.

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The new wave of urban farming (and fresh food from small spaces!)

Don't worry about climate change and world hunger--this lady's got your back!Watching SuperFreakonomics author Steve Levitt sitting next to Jon Stewart as they shook their heads in disbelief that everyone wasn't on the climate change/geo-engineering bandwagon (It's easy! it's cheap! We know it works!) depressed me to no end. It seems like every challenge we face now has an "easy" technological silver bullet that will spare us sacrifice or even change. GMOs will end hunger. Geo-engineering will solve climate change. A pill will cure obesity. Cellulosic ethanol will eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. It doesn't seem to bother anyone that none of these phantasms currently exist. Indeed, if you ask an expert when exactly we'll get one or the other of these whiz-bang items, the answer is almost always the same: "within ten years." And so it's been for decades.

At root, I don't think this is really about faith in technology. After all, the only plot twist more hackneyed and familiar than the miraculous, world-changing invention (a plot twist the media have a long history of falling for) is the unintended consequences that cause it all to go horribly wrong. Instead, this is, as Ralph Loglisci of the Center for a Livable Future put it regarding GMOs, "about political expediency." I would also add a healthy dose of denial to that mix. Not necessarily a denial of whatever impending disasters face us. Rather it's denial of the failure of progress -- in other words, an unwillingness to accept that what we've been doing in this country more or less since WWII represents anything other than progress. Techno-fixers' courage and will quails at the thought that we might be heading for dead-ends and not the limitless plains of the future.

Topping it all off is the feeling among elites in this country (in the media, in politics, in business) that they neither want to do the heavy-lifting that's required to deal with our problems nor do they think Americans will accept any real changes to their fossil-fueled, meat-powered, SUV'd way of life (although I think it's an open question as to whether the elites are considering "typical" Americans' desires or their own). We can't change our ways, they say, so you scientists better get out your magic wands and start waving.

GMOs are, of course, a perfect example of this phenomenon. The NYT hosted a recent debate asking if "Biotech food can feed the world." As usual, "activists" were the voices in opposition to a biotech solution while scientists provided the favorable opinion. This despite the fact that there are indeed scientists who remain skeptical of GMOs -- like those behind the landmark analysis of GMO shortcomings, Failure to Yield. And to read the pro-GMO arguments, you'd think that there were piles of magic seeds sitting around that could cure hunger if only the "activists" would let farmers plant them. There aren't.

The only GMO seeds available are ones that have been engineered to survive dousings of particular herbicides or to produce their own pesticide. Of course, they do still require heavy applications of fertilizer and water (and even pesticides and herbicides). But drought tolerance? Or supersized fruit? Or any other really promising development? Ten years away, swears Monsanto. And health risks? No worries -- it's not like anyone's gotten sick from eating GMO food, supporters declare. Of course, we've never had an industrial product whose health effects on humans, animals or insects only became clear years or even decades later (at which point early studies suggesting risks are once again unearthed). Critics are such a bunch of lily-livered worry-warts!

And when scientists do create a more useful GMO trait, like virus resistance in squash, things still don't turn out right. In field trials, the GMO squash was indeed more resistant to the viruses, but more susceptible to a squash-killing bacteria. As a result, the conventional squash out-performed them. Meanwhile, we're seeing more and more examples of seeds developed through advanced but standard breeding techniques out-perform even the highest-tech GMOs.

If this were really about preventing the catastrophe of 9 billion mouths to feed in 2050 (as GMO proponents incessantly remind us), the obvious answer isn't a magic seed, it's to do all we can to ensure there aren't 9 billion mouths to feed in 2050. Some might read that sentence and call it "population control." Others, like Nick Kristof, might observe that policies which empower women in the developing world can actually accomplish the goal of reduced birthrates (not to mention higher standards of living) -- and probably for less money that we'd pay Monsanto and its ilk in their fruitless quest for super seeds. But those kinds of on the ground, "small-scale" policies get far more rhetorical support than they do financial support. After all, cynicism about the ability to make change in this country pales in comparison to cynicism about the ability to make change in Africa. It's much easier to invent some magic seed, give it to African farmers and leave it at that.

I recommend keeping the GMO story in mind when you hear about the next great techno-fix, whether it's spraying sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere to solve global warming or turning to agriculture to solve our gasoline addiction. Hyping these mythical future developments has nothing to do with the success of science and everything to with the failure of politics and our collective imaginations.

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Almost anything that happens in our nation’s capital can be explained by a quote from Alice in Wonderland. Usually, that’s a bad thing. In the case of the Solar Technology Roadmap Act which the U.S. House of Representatives passed last week, however, invoking Alice is all for the good.

Lost in a land where nothing is what it seems, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she ought to go. He answers, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

The bill’s author, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) calls it a Roadmap for a reason: HR 3585’s greatest strength is that it knows exactly where it wants to go.

“Ultimately,” Giffords told the Solar Economic Forum last month, “the reason I get so excited about solar power is that it offers a viable solution -- at least in part -- to all of these major challenges: Economic competitiveness [jobs], energy independence [national security], and climate protection.”

Because the Roadmap doesn’t depend exclusively on “green votes” it passed in the House by a convincing margin of 310 to 106, with the backing of IBM, Intel and even the (beleaguered) U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

With the destination locked in, HR 3585 lays out a route for getting there.

•    Give solar power an institutional legitimacy and a stable presence inside the government.

The United States has never had a serious and sustained policy for sustainable energy. As a reaction to the oil price shock of the 1970s, the Carter administration created the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), led by Denis Hayes, the main organizer of the first Earth Day. SERI’s budget in 1981 was an astonishing $1.4 billion. The investment paid off handsomely. The U.S. led the world in solar technology.

After Ronald Reagan was elected president, SERI’s funding was slashed, with predictable results. America not only lost the lead -- we quit the race. Japan and Germany bought up the technology and hired researchers cut loose by Reaganomics. Solar power flourished in those countries while it withered here. Says Hayes, “We lost an entire generation of researchers.”

Watching the floor debate on the Roadmap must have been excruciating for those who know SERI’s history. GOP opponents like California’s Tom McClintock, bemoaned a history of “squandering” taxpayer money on solar R&D that always failed to deliver -- without mentioning his party’s role in decimating funding for renewable energy at a critical moment.

Giffords’ plan was modeled after the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, an industry plan with a successful 20-year track record. HR 3585 creates an 11-member committee, drawn from government labs, industry, and academia. The committee will draw up a Roadmap for solar research, development, and demonstration projects (RDD) with goals for the short-term (2 years), mid-term (7 years) and long-term (15 years).

•    Fund solar power research, development and demonstration projects adequately and predictably.

The Roadmap authorizes $350 million for solar RDD beginning in October 2010. That amount rises incrementally over the next five years to reach $550 million.

Is that sufficient? Thirty-four Nobel Prize winning scientists don’t seem to think so. The group sent President Obama a letter in July citing the President’s own request for $15 billion annually for a decade to fund clean energy RDD. They urged the president to push Congress for that funding level in the Senate climate bill.

Roadmap supporters are quick to point out that the $15 billion was for all clean energy, not just solar. And, they add, the money authorized by HR 3595 exceeds federal spending on solar RDD in any year since SERI’s heyday nearly 30 years ago. Finally, the Roadmap isn’t the only funding mechanism for renewable energy. Yesterday, for example, President Obama announced $3.4 billion in grants to upgrade the nation’s electrical grid, a tremendous boon to the solar industry.

While Giffords' office doesn’t seek or expect funding from any sources other than those spelled out in the bill, I suspect that even they think of the Roadmap as a good start -- necessary but insufficient to achieve all of the bill’s goals.

For now, the road Giffords' bill must travel before it becomes law passes through what could be treacherous terrain: the Senate.

The morning after her bill passed the House, I asked Giffords how she felt about the Roadmap’s chances in the upper house. She was, unremarkably, “cautiously optimistic.”

“We’ve still got a long way to go,” she said. “But I’m hoping it will land on the president’s desk by the end of this year.”

But there’s little chance of that happening, given the other pressing issues before the Senate and the dwindling days in this session. It’s more likely to be taken up next session when it stands a good chance of passing.

There is, however, a tantalizing scenario in which the Roadmap could become law this year -- as an amendment to the climate bill now being debated in the Senate. Given the broad bipartisan support for the Giffords’ Roadmap in the House, the bill could actually attract a vote or two for the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

The chance that funding for solar power could actually be an enticement for Senators who emphasize national security and a pro-business agenda shows just how far the industry has traveled and how well Giffords has framed the debate.

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Robert Byrd

Sen. Robert Byrd hated the climate bill that passed the House in June (more on that below), but he seems a little more open to the Kerry-Boxer bill being considered in the Senate.  As the Bluefield Daily Telegraph reported just after the bill was introduced:

[Byrd] said he was encouraged by the greater focus on clean coal technology, but still concerned about the proposed bill.

“I will continue to work with my colleagues to strike a balance that treats West Virginia’s interests fairly as the legislative process moves forward,” Byrd said. “However, I will actively oppose any bill that would harm the workers, families, industries or our resource-based economy in West Virginia.”

Byrd said he was glad to see that Kerry and Boxer included provisions he and other senators recommended related to carbon capture and storage techniques.

“While this is an encouraging sign, we have a long way to go on this legislation,” Byrd said. “Many issues have yet to be addressed. There is still a tough road ahead.”

In August, Byrd and nine other Democrats wrote a letter to President Obama saying they wouldn’t support a climate bill that puts American businesses on an uneven playing field.  They called for a bill to include a tariff on goods imported into the U.S. from countries that don’t have binding targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. 

Here’s more on Byrd and climate, as written by Kate Sheppard on 21 July 2009:

Sen. Robert Byrd has been an adamant supporter of coal throughout his long tenure in the Senate. Coal is his No. 1 interest in climate legislation, and the major concessions made to the industry in the House climate bill weren’t enough to win him over. (Nor were they enough to win over West Virginia’s two Democratic representatives, Nick Rahall and Alan Mollohan, who both voted against the bill.)

Byrd’s staff sent out an official statement from the senator shortly after the House passed the legislation. “I cannot support the House bill in its present form,” Byrd said in the statement. “I continue to believe that clean coal can be a ‘green’ energy. Those of us who understand coal’s great potential in our quest for energy independence must continue to work diligently in shaping a climate bill that will ensure access to affordable energy for West Virginians.”

Last year, Byrd was the only Democrat to vote against even starting debate on the Senate climate bill. He was not present for the main vote on the bill.

Track the debate and take action >>>

Do you know more about this senator’s stance on climate legislation?  Tell us.

Find out about other senators by clicking on their names in the right column.

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Grist's Umbra Fisk took to the streets of New York City on Saturday, October 24, to chat up participants in 350.org's International Climate Action Day. Take a stroll with Umbra across the Brooklyn Bridge and up to Times Square, and eavesdrop on her conversations with Peter Singer, Bat Man, Robert Swan and the climate-conscious denizens of New York.

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NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center has issued its latest monthly, “State of the Climate: Global Analysis,” which found:

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September 2009 was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th Century average of 15.0°C (59.0°F). This was the second warmest September on record, behind 2005, and the 33rd consecutive September with a global temperature above the 20th Century average. The last below-average September occurred in 1976.

Significantly, September was only 0.04°C (0.07°F) off the 2005 record.

This near-record September comes fast on the heels of the second warmest August on record and warmest June-July-August for the oceans.  I previously noted that NASA reported hottest June to September on record.

What is most interesting about this report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the temperature report from the lower troposphere (”the lowest 8 km (5 miles) of the atmosphere”) — the satellite data that began in 1979 analyzed by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS).

UAH and RSS say September was also the second warmest in their records — a mere 0.01°C off the 1998 record.  NOAA reports that the lower troposphere warming trend for September is

So yes, the satellite data also shows that the lower atmosphere is warming, contrary to what you may have heard.

In fact, the mid-troposphere (about 2 to 6 miles above the Earth, which includes a portion of the lower stratosphere) is also warming, according to both UAH and RSS.  It’s not warming quite as fast because as the lower troposphere in part “because the stratosphere has cooled due to increasing greenhouse gases in the troposphere and losses of ozone in the stratosphere.”

The global temperature anomaly for the month looked like this:

Although the United States as a whole was “1.0°F above the 20th Century average,” with record-tying temperatures in California, as usual the deniers had a few seemingly cool places in the country on which to feast.

We are still seeing staggering warming in some of the worst places from the perspective of the planet as a whole, the land of the the permafrost permamelt, which currently contains contains more carbon than the atmosphere (see here).

Again, what makes these record temps especially impressive is that we’re only in a weak El Niño, and we’re at “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,” according to NASA.

Stay tuned.  The heat is on — or, rather, it’s never been off.

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The new version of Energy Self-Reliant States manages to duplicate the fallacies of their previous reports, and adds new ones. Their takeaway: "… 3 in 5 states could get all of their electricity from in-state renewable resources." Their statistics actually support the need for transmissions. Some states can produce surplus power. Some states can't meet all their own needs. If we are going to move to 100 percent renewable energy (or nearly 100 percent), we need transmission lines to get power from states with surpluses to states without.

There are a few other tricks here. The New Rules Institute considers storage cost for meeting 20 to 35 percent of electricity needs via renewables; for that small a percent of the grid you can get by with between zero new storage or at worst a few minutes of peak power. But if we are to supply really high percentages of power from renewables we will need hours of storage. That gets expensive. Given both daily and seasonal variation in delivery of renewables, transmission (which can reduce the need for storage drastically) is the cheaper alternative. New Rules skews the numbers by not including storage needs when comparing the cost of a local mostly renewable grid to a national mostly renewable grid. A smart grid, while useful, reduces but does not replace either transmission or storage. That is because transmission and storage can both handle cases where there is zero or nearly zero power available for a brief period of time, whereas a smart grid can never reduce demand to zero or close to zero.

Other tricks: a lot of this "renewable energy" is "combined heat and power" -- parasitic electricity generated by using waste heat from industrial process. To the extent we can make the industrial processes more efficient, or run them on renewable electricity, CHP resources are lower than estimated. Similarly they have high estimates for small scale hydro, without considering how much of that small scale hydro damages the environment in ways that compare to large scale hydropower per kWh.

Another trick here is that they don't consider electricity needs if we substitute electricity for a large portion of transportation energy, and possibly for industrial needs. I know that the New Rules Institute tends to be optimistic about biomass, and possibly they think that biomass can drive transportation and industry. But when we consider both returning nutrients to the soil, and not displacing food or wilderness, I think we will find biomass potential limited compared to renewable electricity for these purposes.

Here is the bottom line: we should learn from nature in reconstructing our infrastructure to be sustainable. And nature is not purely local, not "self-reliant". Salmon migrate thousands of miles, as do many fish species. Gray Whales travel around the globe. Birds and insects cross continents.  Many local plants depend on nutrients transported thousands of miles by rivers. We should try to rest lightly on the land, making it sustainable and beautiful, efficient, robust and reliable. And if we do that we will find the right balance between local and global without prejudging where that balance lies.

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Check out the pitch on agribiz lobbying group American Farm Bureau's (AFB) new anti-climate bill website:

Activists claim there will be droughts, floods, loss of species, and more, if the Senate does not pass the Climate Change bill. But their bill wouldn't even help the climate ... The fact is politics is driving the need for passage -- not facts! The cap-and-trade bill does nothing for Climate Change -- it's simply a tax on U.S. energy that gives other countries a free pass. That's wrong. This is the kind of policy we ask you to stand against today.

It's at the heart of a new campaign the AFB is attempting to orchestrate against the Kerry-Boxer climate change bill. Kate Sheppard reports:

According to a memo emailed to Farm Bureau members and obtained by Mother Jones, they're also urging state bureaus to hand-deliver to their senators' in-state offices farmer-style hats -- or, if you prefer, "farmer caps" -- bearing a AFB sticker opposing the legislation. They're also sending starter kits for the campaign to their state affiliates by Nov. 6.

"Using the familiar farmer cap and the 'Don't CAP Our Future' message sticker to brand the cap with opposition to the issue, state Farm Bureaus can influence your Senators with a visual impact. The farmer caps plan is designed to be used in the state and multiple events."

In addition, the Bureau has created an "action center" that will be used to target specific senators, a petition that members can sign, and a form letter to send to senators ...

AFB President Bob Stallman has a lengthy history of climate denial and obstructionism -- it was his hymnbook from which House Ag Chairman Collin Peterson sang in Peterson's gleeful dismantling of the House's climate bill. But the AFB's new overtly denialist lobbying campaign takes it to another level. And best of all, it's called "Don't CAP Our Future." Get it? Cap-and-trade? Farmers like to wear caps? Wheee!

But like its friends at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, I wonder if the AFB has gone a bit too far. The other main agribiz group, the National Farmers Union, is on board with the idea of addressing climate change. Meanwhile, the USDA actively supports the measure and is on the verge of finalizing their climate bill impact estimates which show a net benefit to farmers. The possibility of bipartisan support has even been raised with GOP Sen. Lindsay Graham's full-throated endorsement of the Senate bill.

The data is certainly against it, despite the AFB's attempts to plug up its ears and let loose a loud "I'm not listening!!" The U.N. climate group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, just updated their latest estimates indicating that climate change is accelerating. Germany's climate advisory board has looked at the most recent evidence and has concluded we actually need to cut net carbon emissions worldwide to zero by 2050. And two new studies that look at climate change's effects on agriculture show severe disruptions to industrial agriculture in the near term and up to 80 percent reductions in U.S. corn and soy yields by the end of the century.

Obviously, the AFB already has an ace-in-the-hole in Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), new Chairman of the Senate Ag Committee -- there's no telling what kind of damage she can do if and when she gets her hands on the Kerry-Boxer bill. Indeed, she's already said she wants to kill it outright. And it's true that despite hopeful signs, passage of a climate bill remains uncertain at best. But the AFB has clearly thrown its cap in with the deniers and the do-nothings. If its member farmers do the same and succeed in killing the climate bill -- what exactly do they think they will have accomplished? Other than guaranteeing their children's and their grandchildren's suffering. Perhaps someone should put that on a cap, too.

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Friday factoids time: The U.S. biomedical and pharmaceutical industry invests between 10-20 percent of revenues in research and development (R&D) and new product development, spending $58.8 billion on R&D in 2007. The U.S. government adds an additional $30 billion per year investment in biomedical R&D through the National Institutes of Health.

In contrast, the U.S. energy sector invests well below $3 billion annually in R&D in an industry with well over a trillion dollars in annual revenue. The energy sector's R&D spending as a percent of revenues -- call that figure the industry's innovation intensity -- is just 0.23 percent. That compares to a national average innovation intensity across all industries of 2.6 percent, or 10-times greater than the energy-sector's innovation intensity. And it pales in comparison with the innovation intensity of leading technology and innovation-intensive sectors including biomedical technology (10-20 percent), information technology (10-15 percent), and semiconductors (16 percent).

This downright paltry private-sector energy innovation spending leaves a massive energy innovation gap that the U.S. government barely begins to fill, investing only about $5 billion annually in energy R&D. That's barely more than half the levels spent on public research to pursue clean and affordable energy alternatives during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The scale and urgency of our national energy challenges have clearly grown since then, yet the national commitment to energy innovation has moved in the wrong direction. Public R&D spending on health care ($30 billion) and defense ($80 billion) signal the scale of true national innovation priorities and begs the question: when will the U.S. get serious about investments in clean energy innovation?  When it does, a new National Institutes of Energy and a major increase in federal energy R&D investments are needed to fill the energy innovation gap and spur a clean energy revolution.

For more on a National Institutes of Energy, see our archives here or the following selected content:

(All factoids and figures from either the BTI, Third Way report, Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy, or Charles Weiss and William Bonvillian's excellent book, Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution) Originally at the Breakthrough Institute

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Today marked one of the final days of the Bangkok U.N. Climate Negotiations. With the end of this intersessional in sight, the International Youth Delegation (IYD) has officially declared “No Confidence” in the road to Copenhagen.

With youth delegates from over 30 countries engaging in the Bangkok process, the IYD cited pathetically weak targets from the North, alarm that a second commitment period in the Kyoto Protocol will not be secured, and a lack of guarantees for protection of indigenous peoples’ rights and interests in its declaration. The current text of the draft climate deal is so weak and so full of “false solutions” (measures like offsetting that actually make the problem worse) it is unacceptable.

Youth delegates representing each continent addressed the U.N. today, detailing the urgency of the crisis as it affects their communities currently, telling stories of their hope and organizing alongside their denunciation of the state of play in the U.N. Negotiations.

This week the Annex 1 (rich countries), attempted to kill the Kyoto Protocol (KP). We are nearing upon the end of the current KP term, and a lack of renewing it means that the world would lose the few legally binding international climate agreements it has (as insufficient as they are). The US in particular has deliberately undermined the KP by trying to merge it with the Convention Processes (the other track). Other Annex 1 countires are hiding behind the US to avoid their responsibility. The excuse is that the United States will not sign, and therefore the whole thing should be scrapped and an entirely new deal can be struck on its own. It is lunacy to think that this will yield a stronger outcome, and the G77 (the rest of the world) countries are furious.

We have always known the U.S. won't sign the KP; the world cannot continue to wait for the U.S. to get on board. In Bali, the U.S. already committed to setting comparable targets to other Annex 1 countries, so the world could deal with the U.S. in the AWG-LCA (Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action). This all amounts to a shell game: more dirty delaying tactics from self-interested countries who are content to strip away basic attempts at an international agreement (for example "compliance" -- meaning that the U.S. would have international oversight of its targets, or "top-down target setting" -- meaning the international community sets carbon targets together based on science, rather than each countries independently setting their targets based on what their fossil fuel extraction industries dictate).

Allowing the U.S. to drag the world out of existing legal obligations is disgraceful. These negotiations are going backwards. Make no mistake: our future is being held hostage to interests that have consistently thumbed their noses at the international community and their obligations to the rest of the world. This process has been polluted by self-interested corporations and nations looking to profit off of our crisis. They have been pushing false solutions that exacerbate rather than fix the problem. Not only are the targets set by rich countries weak, but they are deceptive. Rather than representing actual emissions reductions, they contain unacceptable proportions of offsets, which do not reduce emissions, and displace the burden back onto the developing countries of the world.

In the meantime, the roadmap developed in Bali has been betrayed, as Annex 1 countries are putting forward the perverse idea that somehow developing countries should (or can) act first. Further language on indigenous rights is being removed and diluted from the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) text. "Rights" are being defined as "right to participate," as opposed to "rights over land and communities", and existing U.N. language (such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples or UNDRIP, and the principles of Free Prior and Informed Consent or FPIC) is far from being adopted. This has led to major protests all week and this morning youth supported the Indigenous Caucus in a large "No Rights?? No REDD!!" demonstration on the front steps of the U.N.

The youth will not accept a dirty deal.

Rights-based language in the text (including UNDRIP and FPIC), no offsets, limiting global temperatures to 1.5 degrees C and 350 ppm of c02, unconditional legally binding targets for Annex 1 countries of at least 40% reductions by 2020, and a LOT of money for adaptation and technology transfer are just some of the baseline components that must be in the text to even begin to sensibly move forward. Regardless of what governments decide, youth across the world are continuing to organize social movements to build meaningful solutions in their own communities, working on local, national, and international levels. Our hope for the future is in the power of civil society to reshape what is perceived as politically possible.

See the video of the press conference here:

Bangkok: International Youth Delegation declares "No Confidence" in road to Copenhagen from CYD To Copenhagen on Vimeo.

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Let’s credit Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) for raising questions in the National Journal about the viability of cap-and-trade versus other approaches for the United States to employ in addressing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions linked with global climate change.

Senator Murkowski says that only one approach – cap-and-trade – has received significant attention in the Congress.  Let’s put aside for the moment the fact that most of the 1,428 pages of H.R. 2454 – the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (otherwise known as the Waxman-Markey bill) – are not about cap-and-trade at all, but about a host of other regulatory approaches (several of which are highly problematic, as I’ve discussed in a previous post).  We can also put aside the fact that both conventional regulatory approaches and carbon taxes have been discussed repeatedly in numerous House and Senate committees over the past decade, and received detailed attention from a succession of U.S. administrations.

So, let’s not quibble about the Senator’s claim that cap-and-trade is the only approach that has received serious attention.  Instead, let’s address the key substantive questions which Senator Murkowski raises, because they are important questions:  Is cap-and-trade the most effective way of addressing climate change?  And are there other approaches capable of achieving the same results at lower cost?  From my perspective, as a card-carrying environmental economist, these are indeed the key questions.

While political leaders in the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the United States (Congress) move toward cap-and-trade systems as their preferred approach for achieving meaningful reductions in emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, many people – including some of my fellow economists — have been critical of the cap-and-trade approach in the climate context and have endorsed the use of carbon taxes.  The Senator is correct that we should reflect on the merits of that alternative approach.

But, first, what about conventional regulatory approaches, that is, performance standards and technology standards?

Conventional Regulatory Standards

In short, experience has shown that such standards cannot ensure achievement of emissions targets, create problematic unintended consequences, and are very costly for what they achieve.

Why can conventional standard not ensure achievement of reasonable emissions targets?  First, standards typically focus on new emissions sources, and do not address emissions from existing sources.  Think about greenhouse gas standards for new cars and new power plants, for example.  Second, standards cannot possibly address all types of new sources, given the ubiquity of energy generation and use (and hence CO2 emissions) in a modern economy.  Third, emissions depend upon many factors that cannot be addressed by standards, such as:  emissions from existing sources and unregulated new sources; how quickly the existing capital stock is replaced; the growth in the number of new emissions sources; and how intensively emissions-generating plants and equipment are utilized.

Next, what about those unintended consequences?  First, by reducing operating costs, energy-efficiency standards – for example — can cause more intensive use of regulated equipment (for example, air conditioners are run more often), leading to offsetting increases in emissions — the “rebound effect.”  Second, firms and households may delay replacing existing equipment if standards make new equipment more costly.  This is the well-known problem with vintage-differentiated regulations or “New Source Review.”  Third, standards may encourage counterproductive, unintended shifts among regulated activities (for example, from purchasing cars to purchasing SUVs under the CAFE program).  All of these unintended consequences result from the problematic incentives that standards can create, compared with the efficient incentives created by a cap-and-trade system (or a carbon-tax, for that matter).

If you favor a regulatory approach, then you may welcome what’s coming from EPA as a result of the Supreme Court ruling of a few years ago combined with the Administration’s endangerment finding.  For my part, I don’t welcome it; I worry about it, because the set of regulatory approaches that could be forthcoming will accomplish relatively little, do so at an unnecessarily high cost, and hence play into the hands of opponents of progressive climate policy.  (More about that in some other, future post.)

Putting a Price on Carbon

To virtually all participants in the policy world, it has become increasingly clear that the only approach that can do the job and do it cost-effectively is one which involves at its core putting a price on carbon.  That leaves cap-and-trade and carbon taxes.  Let me take these in turn.

Cap-and-Trade

Let’s step back from the debate regarding the details of the Waxman-Markey House bill or the new Senate proposal by Senators Boxer and Kerry, and think about the essence of the cap-and-trade approach.  (For some of those details, however, please see my previous posts, where I have commented on various aspects of Waxman-Markey and described a proposal I developed for The Hamilton Project of an up-stream, economy-wide CO2 cap-and-trade system to cost-effectively achieve meaningful greenhouse gas emissions reductions.)

Here are the basics.  First, aggregate emissions from regulated sources are capped, and the cap is enforced through a requirement for affected firms to hold emissions allowances.  Importantly, allowance trading minimizes costs of meeting the cap.  It does this because allowances migrate to the highest-valued uses, covering emissions that are the most costly to reduce.  So, the emission reductions undertaken are those that are least costly to achieve.  In essence, the uniform market price of allowances creates incentives for all covered sources to reduce all emissions, and do so cost-effectively.

A cap-and-trade system can be more environmentally-effective and more cost-effective than standards.  First, in terms of environmental-effectiveness, a cap-and-trade system can ensure achievement of emissions targets.  Cap-and-trade allows policymakers to set specific overall emissions targets.  And a well-enforced system guarantees achievement of those targets, because emissions will not exceed available allowances.  An economy-wide, upstream cap-and-trade system on the carbon content of fossil fuels can cover all fossil-fuel-related CO2 emissions without needing to regulate each emissions source individually.

In terms of cost-effectiveness, a well-designed cap-and-trade system minimizes emission reduction costs.  Unlike NOx, SO2, and other pollutants, GHG emission reductions have the same effect no matter how, where, or when they are achieved.  This makes the climate change problem unique in the degree to which compliance flexibility can be used to lower costs without compromising environmental integrity.  Hence, a cap-and-trade system can minimize costs while still meeting environmental objectives by offering three forms of flexibility: what flexibility; where flexibility; and when flexibility.

In regard to “what flexibility,” many types of actions offer low-cost emission reductions, and a cap-and-trade system allows emission reductions through whatever measures are least costly.  By contrast, standards can target only certain identified emission reduction measures, leaving other cost-effective opportunities untapped.  Furthermore, predictions of what measures are cost-effective may be wrong.

In regard to “where flexibility,” the costs of emission reductions vary widely across industries, across facilities, and even across users of the same equipment.  A cap-and-trade system exploits this variation in costs by achieving reductions wherever they are least costly.  By contrast, standards would only be cost-effective if they accounted for all of the variation in costs across sectors, technologies, and regulated entities — but it is completely infeasible for standards to do this.  Emission reduction costs across sectors and technologies change over time, making the flexibility offered by a cap-and-trade system even more valuable.  Also, lower-cost opportunities to reduce emissions may exist in other countries.  Importantly, a cap-and-trade system creates a common currency (emissions allowances) that makes it possible to link with other systems.

A cap-and-trade system also minimizes costs through “when flexibility.”  Costs can be reduced through flexibility in the timing of emission reductions by avoiding:  premature retirement of capital stock or lock-in of existing technologies; and unnecessarily costly reductions in one year due to unusual circumstances when less-costly offsetting reductions can be achieved in other years.  A cap-and-trade can incorporate “when flexibility”
without compromising cumulative emissions targets through: allowance banking and borrowing; and multi-year compliance periods.

Beyond such “static cost-effectiveness,” cap-and-trade creates incentives for technology innovation, and thereby lowers long-run costs.  By rewarding any means of reducing emissions, a cap-and-trade system provides broad incentives for any innovations that lower the cost of achieving emissions targets.  Although standards may encourage development of lower cost means of meeting the standards’ specific requirements, they do not encourage efforts to exceed those standards.

Several cap-and-trade systems have been successful at achieving environmental goals and cost savings:  the phase-out of leaded gasoline in the 1980s; the phase-out of ozone depleting substances; and the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 SO2 allowance trading program to cut acid rain by 50%.  Perceived shortcomings in other cap-and-trade systems reflect design choices, not problems with the policy instrument itself.  This applies both to California’s RECLAIM program, and the pilot phase of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (which is operating successfully in its real, Kyoto phase).

In summary, compared with conventional standards, a cap-and-trade system can be more environmentally-effective and more cost-effective.  As with any policy instrument, however, careful design is important.

Taxing Carbon

As I mentioned, it is clear that the only approach that can do the job and do it cost-effectively is one that involves putting a price on carbon.  So, what about the other carbon-pricing approach — a carbon tax?

I am by no means opposed to the notion of a carbon tax, having written about such approaches for more than twenty years.  Indeed, both cap-and-trade and carbon taxes are good approaches to the problem; they have many similarities, some tradeoffs, and a few key differences.   I am opposed, however, to the confused and misleading straw-man arguments that have sometimes been used against cap-and-trade by carbon-tax proponents.

While there are tradeoffs between these two principal market-based instruments targeting CO2 emissions — a cap-and-trade system and a carbon tax – the best (and most likely) approach for the short to medium term in the United States is a cap-and-trade system.  I say this based on three criteria:  environmental effectiveness, cost effectiveness, and distributional equity.  So, my position is not capitulation to politics.  On the other hand, sound assessments of environmental effectiveness, cost effectiveness, and distributional equity should surely be made in the real-world political context.

The key merits of the cap-and-trade approach I have described above are, first, the program can provide cost-effectiveness, while achieving meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions levels.  Second, it offers an easy means of compensating for the inevitably unequal burdens imposed by a climate policy.  Third, it provides a straightforward means to harmonize with other countries’ climate policies.  Fourth, it avoids the current political aversion in the United States to taxes.  Fifth, it is unlikely to be degraded – in terms of its environmental performance and cost effectiveness – by political forces. And sixth, this approach has a history of successful adoption and implementation in this country over the past two decades.

Having said this, there are some real differences between taxes and cap-and-trade that need to be recognized.  First, environmental effectiveness:  a tax does not guarantee achievement of an emissions target, but it does provides greater certainty regarding costs.  This is a fundamental tradeoff.  Taxes provide automatic temporal flexibility, which needs to be built into a cap-and-trade system through provision for banking, borrowing, and possibly a cost-containment mechanism.  On the other hand, political economy forces strongly point to less severe targets if carbon taxes are used, rather than cap-and-trade – this is not a tradeoff, and this is why environmental NGOs are opposed to the carbon-tax approach.

In principle, both carbon taxes and cap-and-trade can achieve cost-effective reductions, and – depending upon design — the distributional consequences of the two approaches can be the same.  But the key difference is that political pressures on a carbon tax system will most likely lead to exemptions of sectors and firms, which reduces environmental effectiveness and drives up costs, as some low-cost emission reduction opportunities are left off the table.  But political pressures on a cap-and-trade system lead to different allocations of allowances, which affect distribution, but not environmental effectives, and not cost-effectiveness.

Proponents of carbon taxes worry about the propensity of political processes under a cap-and-trade system to compensate sectors through free allowance allocations, but a carbon tax is sensitive to the same political pressures, and may be expected to succumb in ways that are ultimately more harmful:  reducing environmental achievement and driving up costs.

The Bottom Line

The Hamilton Project staff concluded in an overview paper (which I highly recommend) that a well-designed carbon tax and a well-designed cap-and-trade system would have similar economic effects.  Hence, they said, the two primary questions to use in deciding between them should be:  which is more politically feasible; and which is more likely to be well-designed?

The answer to the first question is obvious; and I have argued here that given real-world political forces, the answer to the second question also favors cap-and-trade.  In other words, it is important to identify and design policy that will be “optimal in Washington,” not just from the perspective of Cambridge, New Haven, or Berkeley.

In “policy heaven,” the optimal instrument to address climate-change emissions may well be a carbon tax (largely because of its simplicity), but in the real world in which policy is developed and implemented, cap-and-trade is the best approach if one is serious about addressing the threat of climate change with meaningful, effective, and cost-effective policies.

Related Links:

Climate Denial Crock of the Week: The big mist take

What to make of the new climate poll

Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?

Early in September 2009, at a gathering of experts on global climate change, one of the world's most respected and experienced climate modelers, Mojib Latif, made some observations on climate, media and human nature.

The message seemed clear.

natural variations in the long term warming might be misinterpreted,

by the media. out of ignorance, or malice.

Climate deniers were quick to take Latif's remarks, and begin

doing exactly that.

You can listen to Latif's original remarks, here, by clicking on the

recording titled "Advancing climate prediction science".

http://www.wmo.int/wcc3/rec_audios_en.html

the  original powerpoint is here:

http://www.wmo.int/wcc3/sessionsdb/documents/PS3_Latif.pdf

An analysis is here:

Timeline of a Deception

Related Links:

Climate Denial Crock of the Week: The big mist take

The U.S. Chamber needs to get its story straight

The new wave of urban farming (and fresh food from small spaces!)