For two decades, the big challenge of global warming was getting people to realize that it existed. “Deniers” were once a force to be reckoned with, but through the hard work of the environmental movement, they’ve now been relegated to the ideological fringe. Even conservatives talk about investing in clean energy and the need to reduce our carbon emissions, with Republican presidential candidate John McCain saying global warming would be one of three key issues of his presidency. We’ve crossed item #1 off the to-do list, and now a new task looms large on the horizon, no less challenging than the first: everyone knows that global warming is real, so what do we do about it?
Environmentalists have long believed that a price for carbon is the obvious answer to this question; “just pop in the economic incentives and watch them work their magic,” as Monica Prasad put it in the New York Times. The idea is that penalizing dirty energy will give clean energy enough of a push to topple the reign of the carbon-emitters. But it’s not that simple. A growing number of environmental thinkers are taking a critical look at the true impacts of Kyoto, the fast pace of international development, and the slow pace of clean energy development and deployment, and they’re asking a question that shakes the foundations of conventional climate policy wisdom: is a carbon price ecologically irrelevant?
Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is part of this paradigm shift. In a recent Scientific American op-ed, he wrote:
A trading system might marginally influence the choices between coal and gas plants or provoke a bit more adoption of solar and wind power, but it will not lead to the necessary fundamental overhaul of energy systems.
The recent spike in oil prices is evidence that a price for carbon doesn’t deserve to be at the center of climate policy. Though prices have tripled since 9/11 — creating a de facto carbon price — we haven’t converted the American auto fleet to electric. There may have been a slight increase in the number of hybrids, but it’s nothing even close to a wedge.
In order for a carbon price to have an appreciable effect on clean energy technology, it would need to be so high that no politician would dream of supporting it. To make solar competitive with coal, we would need a carbon price $220; Congress is having a hard time passing something in the $7-$12 range. Breakthrough refers to this catch-22 as “the Gordian Knot.”
The second blow to the carbon price way is the realization that the IPCC underestimated both the emissions reductions challenge, and the technology gap between fossil fuels and clean energy. Just how big is that gap? Socolow and Pacala’s famous “stabilization wedges” illustrate the immensity of the chasm. Their list of wedges include ending all deforestation worldwide; doubling our nuclear power capacity (we haven’t built a single new plant in 30 years); and a 700-fold increase in solar power capacity. This is a small sampling of a list that comes out to 18 wedges in total, most of which represent massive engineering challenges. Socolow and Pacala assume 11 of these wedges to be “embedded in the baseline scenario,” meaning that if we continue business as usual, a big portion of the heavy lifting in terms of carbon emissions reductions will occur automatically. Environmentalists are confident that the “remaining” wedges will be easily achieved with a price for carbon, but this is complacency.
A small price incentive isn’t enough; we need a real technology policy. Among those of us who believe climate change is the biggest challenge mankind has ever faced, it’s still unclear how that policy will take shape. Will we disagree? You bet. There is plenty of room for nuance and interpretation. But the climate cold war is finally thawing, and it is time to begin an open, honest discussion about the best policy solutions.
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Very interesting and thought-provoking.
As far as solutions beyond this, what do you mean by “real technology policy”?
The US may not have built any nuclear plants in the past 30 years (though the overhaul of Brown’s Ferry 1 and completion in progress of Watts Bar 2 is good preparation for new build), but South Korea, Japan, China, and India have active programs. For the nuclear wedge, these countries will likely be among the major players.
Now that just leaves 17 wedges to go…
David - By “real technology policy,” I mean at least $30 billion a year in federal clean energy R&D. Right now it’s something like $3-$4 billion, which is just peanuts, and the best plan from any of the candidates still falls short — Obama’s plan calls for $150 billion over 10 years. But I still support it, because it represents a monumental shift in spending priorities.
Of course, even if we got $30 billion a year for R&D, there would still be a lot of work to do in deciding how that money should be spent: should we focus mostly on deploying existing technologies? Or do we also need to devote a lot of resources to scaling up infant technologies and finding brand new ones as well?
Roger Pielke, Jr. et al’s recent Nature commentary made these questions all the more important by suggesting that the technology gap is far greater than anyone had anticipated.
Stylistic point! “Breakthrough refers to this catch-22 as “the Gordian Knot.” You can’t use the Catch-22 metaphor and than call it a Gordian Knot. That is cuisinarting of metaphors.
Ok, ok so I am being a cranky editor.
On a point of substance - the whole issue about solar is not that a carbon price will make it competitive instantly - but that it will shift investment to hasten the drop in the cost of solar till it is below coal. It is a legitimate question if that will be fast enough using the somewhat indirect method of carbon pricing.
However, this is a problem with S&N’s argument. There is no evidence that their $30 billion in investment will do it faster/better. Why? Federal policy is designed to be a compromise between political forces sufficient to overcome the inertia of congress. Without a “rising tide” of effective, real clean energy investment that provides measurable, verifiable progress and benefit from institutions, states, cities, and communities, federal policy will be a hideous mish-mash of the politically viable. We cannot rely on an overly federal response to investment - it deploys too damn slowly. Maybe you could address that.
The only way to stop global warming and to preserve the enviornment is to change people’s perception of status. As long as status is measured by conspicuous wealth and consumption, the majority of people will focus their energy increasing their appearence of wealth and their consumption. It doesn’t matter that such consumption is harmfull both to the individuals (childhood obesity, adult diabetes, lack of sleep, and limited free time) and to the enviornment, as long as people believe that their status is measured wealth and consumption they will continue to expend most of their efforts to increase their wealth and consumption.
However, even if some of the luxuries are curtailed there is still a need for energy to provide goods and services to the planet’s large population. Yes, you can slow population growth and stabilize, but you are still looking at a large energy demand that is not due to everyone driving Ferraris.
Todd - R. Margolis is hitting on a an important point that often gets overlooked in the conversation: the majority of emissions will soon come from the developing world, where an increasing number of people want to move out of agrarian poverty and build better lives in cities for themselves and their children. You can’t tell people struggling to get by that they shouldn’t want the same comforts and conveniences that the rest of the modern world has. It’s been well-established that as energy use goes up, so does standard of living. I think it’s easier and more effective to look for clean, cheap energy solutions than to try and spread the “less consumption” message to China and India.
The Indigenous Environmental Network, the World Rainforest Movement, the Forests and the European Union Resource Network, Rising Tide, Carbon Trade Watch, the Institute for Policy Studies, and hundreds of other groups and individuals have worked hard for years to expose the limitations — and the serious social justice implications — of focusing on putting a price on carbon.
I think all of us would take strong disagreement with the statement that “Environmentalists have long believed that a price for carbon is the obvious answer”.
For a basic intro — which includes research showing the problems of pricing pollutants stretching back to the 1990s — to the problems of carbon pricing and carbon trading, check out http://www.carbontradewatch.org.
http://www.carbontradewatch.org/pubs/skyeng.pdf provides a great intro to the issues: it was published 5+ years ago.
Although not as bad as some of your past articles (see http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/02/08/jack-johnsons-post-environmentalism/#comments) I again want to ask that breakthrough folks avoid the self-congradulatory framing of yourselves as THE cutting edge thinkers, bravely pushing the envelope on climate change.
Here’s a recent video of long time Carbon Trading critic Larry Lohmann…
http://blip.tv/file/778753