by Michael Shellenberger
Sometime in late 2006, American climate activists got the idea that one of the highest priorities of the movement should be to pressure politicians to endorse the goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. This goal is broadly consistent with reducing global emissions 50 percent by the same date. Rallies were held. Protesters formed the words “80 by 2050″ with their bodies, sometimes naked, so they could be photographed by helicopters.
The effort worked. Presidential candidate John Edwards was one of the first to state in emphatic terms that he would enact laws lowering emissions 80 by 2050, and Clinton and Obama soon followed. California Governor Schwarzenegger committed the state to the goal. Today, support for 80 by 2050 is seen as the litmus test for serious action on climate.
One of the leaders of the “80 by 50″ campaign was Bill McKibben, the environment writer who wrote a seminal book on global warming, The End of Nature, in 1988. Earlier this year he announced, following NASA scientist James Hansen, that the goal of climate activists, and politicians who care about global warming, should be to return the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm for short). Having established 80 by 2050, McKibben is now upping the ante, starting a new web effort called 350.org.
Reducing global emissions 50 percent by 2050 is viewed by many if not most scientists as critical to keep atmospheric emissions to 450 ppm, which is seen as a way to prevent catastrophic and irreversible levels of climate change, namely the loss of two large land-based ice masses, the Greenland ice cap and the West Antarctica ice cap which, if they slid into the ocean, would raise sea levels by 20 feet or higher. McKibben, following Hansen, now says that 450 ppm is too dangerous.
In setting the marker at 350 ppm, Hansen and McKibben say they are being more true to the science and more cautious about the risks. Politically, they serve as a left flank to progressive Democrats in Congress, and they likely hope that in staking out a more extreme position they will provide political cover to their allies.
At first glance the demands for “80 by 50″ and 350 ppm make sense. The conventional wisdom among activists is that every movement needs a goal – a simple way to state its demands and measure its success – and that goal should be more than is politically possible now so that it makes action by politicians easier.
But in the case of global warming, the focus on long-term goals has had the opposite of its intended impact. The dominant global warming legislation, the Climate Security Act sponsored by Senators Lieberman and Warner and modified by committee chairperson Barbara Boxer, says it would nearly achieve the 80 by 2050 goal. But in order to contain energy costs – which must increase dramatically for cap and trade to work – the legislation allows firms to delay emissions reductions long into the future, postponing action until after many members of Congress have either left Washington or this world altogether. (If they are still living in 2050, Sen. Boxer will be 110, Schwarzenegger 103, and Lieberman 108.)
The cost-containment provision contains something known as an “emergency off-ramp” which allows firms to borrow emissions from the future so as to avoid reducing emissions today. In addition, the legislation contains various measures to keep the price for polluting well under $35 per ton of carbon dioxide, less than the price for CO2 in the EU, where a coal-building boom is underway.
According to an analysis by World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank, the result would be few if any emissions reductions before 2025, 13 years after the bill’s start date. More likely, U.S. emissions would continue to increase at the same rate, roughly 0.5 percent per year, as they have since 2000.
If energy prices continue to rise over the next two decades, as the energy demands of China and India continue to skyrocket, pressure will grow – not just from the fossil fuel industry but also from consumers – for Congress to simply delay compliance. No doubt Congress will find ways to do this while still allowing members to affirm their commitment to reducing emissions 70 or 80 percent by 2050.
Much of this is already playing out in California under the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard. California utilities will likely be unable to meet the state’s “20 by 20″ target – 20 percent renewable energy by 2020 – and will instead pay a relatively modest fine, $25 million, maximum, to avoid compliance. University of Wisconsin energy expert (and UC-Berkeley Ph.D) Greg Nemet writes:
As the best sites for renewables are used up, i.e. the windiest and sunniest sites with access to transmission capacity, the stock of inexpensive projects is dwindling and marginal cost of renewables capacity is rising. Improvements that reduce the cost of renewables can address these rising marginal costs, but the penalty should eliminate consideration of any new technology that will cost more than 5 cents over non-renewable sources. Moreover, $25 million per year is a small price to pay relative to the cost of developing, building and operating renewables technologies.
The response to all of this from some environmental groups has been to argue forcefully against cost-containment measures in the Lieberman-Warner Climate Stewardship Act. Allow the price for carbon dioxide to rise higher, they argue, and technologies like solar and the capture and storage of CO2 from coal plants will become cost-competitive.
But environmental groups will never win this battle for the simple reason that the public, and thus their elected policymakers, are far more concerned about rising energy prices than they are about global warming.
Climate legislation will almost certainly pass sometime in 2009 or 2010 under the next president. That legislation will contain cost-containment provisions of one form or another, and these provisions will allow private firms to postpone action, will give politicians bragging rights, and will reassure those concerned about global warming that something is being done.
But the end result would be several more decades of inaction. With the world seeking cheap energy, the most important goal for combating climate change isn’t future emissions targets, or concentrations of carbon dioxide, but rather the price of clean energy. As long as clean energy remains far more expensive than fossil fuels, everything else is just noise.
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I really liked this post. Any chance it could be reposted (or if I could have permission) at the Edwards Evolution Next Revolution (EENR) blog?
Teryn/Michael–
As an organizer who worked with Step It Up and is now gearing up to launch Project 350–two of the projects with a focus on targets/timetables–you might be surprised to hear this: I agree. I’d venture that most of the people you think you disagree with actually agree: bringing down the price of renewables is critical, tapping into the core desires of the average citizen is necessary, and framing expansively is freaking awesome.
And while propagating mutual exclusivity (Cap and ________ OR Investment! Carbon Targets OR Cheap Clean Energy Prices!) makes for spicy blog posts and mildly amusing controversy, in the end this all seems like something of a distraction to me. Here’s the thing: reaching 80% by 2050 or 350ppm is going to require massive investment to bring down the price of clean energy. The two go hand in hand. Shouting in the insular green blogosphere about these false dichotomies is a surefire way to ruffle some feathers but not a particularly productive way to build a mutually supportive movement.
You say “the focus on long-term goals has had the opposite of its intended impact” and I think in this case I do disagree. Our aim with Step It Up, as much as establishing a bright line for policymakers, was to bring a bunch of new people into the movement, to demonstrate that changing the lightbulb wasn’t as important as changing our energy policies and getting re-engaged with the political process. And I actually think that establishing long-term targets is important–a lot flows down from that big number in the sky, and having having a carbon goal post is important economically, legislatively, scientifically, politically, and cognitively. And hell, if legislation that has been informed by these targets actually materializes, and that legislation comes out flawed, I’m psyched if there are groups out there are willing to point out those flaws and work for something better. In fact, I’m psyched to work–actively, deeply, closely–with those groups to figure out how we can create campaigns and movements that are more robust and strategic than what came before.
I for one want to move away from what’s becoming a pretty snarky dynamic of intra-movement bickering and more towards figuring out where our projects overlap, what we can do to build a 21st century movement: diverse, wired, hyper-collaborative, smart as hell, and most of all, unified. I’m sure that being a contrarian renegade has its perks, but there’s got to be a better way to achieve a Breakthrough. If we’re going to get ourselves out of this big global mess we’re in we need more collaboration and less distraction. I know the last 20 minutes I spent writing this could probably have been better applied to movement building, or making myself a snack…
So yep–maybe in the end things like “80% by 2050″ and “350″ are excercises in brevity, figuring out how to say more with fewer characters, a call that activists can shout and Congress can implement. So, in the interest of both collaboration and brevity, I ask you this: how can Investment be transformed into an actionable and specific rallying cry?
And again, in the interest of brevity, a summary of my long-winded comment: more action less talk, more collaboration less snark, more science less rhetoric, more love less hate, more collaboration less blogs–we’re all in 99% agreement, so let’s get to work.
Onwards,
-jon warnow-
jwarnow@gmail.com
P.S. You said “Protesters formed the words “80 by 2050″ with their bodies, sometimes NAKED, so they could be photographed by helicopters.” Naked? Really? Can you post a picture?
Teryn and Michael,
Thanks for the analysis, though I have to say this isn’t anything new coming from Breakthrough. I agree that massive investment is needed and that long-term goals are only part of the solution. We all know the outlook isn’t good, especially if we get mired in the political game. Part of what we do as campaigners, though, is make what seems politically impossible, possible.
But what you fail to consider is that 80 by 50 and 350 ppm are less about long term targets and more about sparking a movement. They point to where we need to be (eventually), but are more about getting people more politically engaged and educated so that when we do legislate on interim goals, they’re the right ones, and not what’s considered “politically feasible” at the moment.
And Teryn, I really do enjoy your posts. I’d rather see your interpretation, as a youth, than a reposting of Michael Shellenberger’s piece — let’s remember that this blog’s tagline is “Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement.”
Phil, thanks for the feedback. Michael and I thought this piece was especially important for the youth movement, and from the feedback we’re getting so far, it looks like that’s the case. (But on a side note — how do you really define youth? I like to think of it as more of a mindset and conceptual paradigm, not an age.)
Ditto Jon and Phil. If you want to attack something, make the headline and the post about the flaws in Warner-Lieberman, not the nuanced imperfections of past youth climate campaigns. While I agree that setting our sights at 2050 goals has had some negative effects, I believe the positives have so far outweighed those negatives. The recent campaigns of Energy Action Coalition, Step It Up, and 1 Sky have engaged tens of thousands of new activists in the climate movement and raised the bar in the federal political arena.
Here are some recent actions I hear people calling for:
* Jessy Tolkan: Sign and spread the Power Vote petition
* Summer Rayne Oakes: Write your representatives supporting the iCAP bill
* The 350 Team: Draw the line in the sand on global warming by making a “350″ visual and sharing it
The clock is ticking. I believe that the youth generation has learned if it is going to bother opposing something in a world full of crises, it better work damn hard in the direction of solutions as well. If you’re going to spend the time writing blog posts about what’s wrong with the climate movement, all I’d ask is that you at least take a moment to propose some positive action at the end of your rant. We have to come together.
I think this raises some valid points providing we can all keep our hackles – which are undestandably on a hair-trigger, given recent discussions – under control. I do wonder about the efficacy of setting goals for 2050, especially given the ‘cost-containment’ measures advocacted under Liberman-Warner (which are really anything but). What if we’re setting ourselves up for disaster? Without ongoing carbon budgeting and short-term targets there’s no way we’re going to achieve an 80% reduction by 2050, nor are we going to get anywhere near to 350ppm. There’s also the issue of whether we’re undermined in the long run by having goals which aren’t achievable – for example, a lot of current climate campaigning rests on the need to keep things under 2 degrees, but it already looks like we’re going to overshoot that. This is something we might need to start thinking about, very seriously. Being self-critical, I think, builds a stronger, smarter, better movement.
But we’ve got to do this without pushing each other down. This is, after all, a movement to stop the greatest ecological catastrophe the world has ever seen. So there ought to be room for everyone’s approaches. There’s no silver bullet, in terms of policy, science, or public opinion, so let’s stop tearing ourselves apart trying to get everyone to agree. We don’t all have to have the same priorities – we can push for investment in renewables AND use things like targets and timetables and aspirational messaging to draw more people into what we are doing. These are not mutually exclusive aims. Let’s focus on the best of what everyone’s doing and remember we’re all fighting for the same thing, before it’s too late.
Josh — we spent all last week writing about the problems with Lieberman-Warner. I even posted part of my analysis on ItsGettingHotInHere. We’ve also written prolifically about solutions (see our website). And Michael and Ted founded the Apollo Alliance.
The problem is that 350 isn’t a solution. It simply doesn’t give us a road map for achieving anything. We don’t have time to focus on targets and timetables set over 40 years in the future. What we need is massive and immediate federal policy aimed at bringing down the price of clean energy below that of coal. That’s what matters. We have to get our conceptual framework right.
I’m going to write a larger response to all of this, but Josh, we would appreciate it if you wouldn’t paint us as just “attacking” and “ranting” when what we’re doing is raising important points that deserve serious discussion.
Dear Jon,
Thanks for your comment.
It is a mischaracterization to say that Michael is taking an “either/or” position against 350.org. Every movement picks a political goal, and 350 and 80 by 50 both suffer from the same problem: they push the target so far into the future as to be irrelevant.
If your political goal doesn’t grapple with the questions of a) the next ten years, b) the limits to cap & trade and carbon pricing, c) investment and technology deployment strategy, and d) China – just to name a few – then it is irrelevant — economically, ecologically, legislatively, scientifically, politically, and cognitively.
You may feel that this criticism is simply negative and divisive. But we can’t afford to take an “it’s all good” approach to the movement any longer. This is not just about agreeing with everyone, coming together, and achieving full unity in “the movement.” These are the questions that are going to define the future of life on this planet. If we’re going to overcome this challenge, we have to take a cold hard look at the facts and build a bullet-proof conceptual foundation for understanding these questions and a political strategy to achieve massive and immediate emissions reductions.
You claim that “a lot flows down from that big number in the sky, and having a carbon goal post is important economically, legislatively, scientifically, politically, and cognitively.” But you never back up that claim with evidence that either 80 by 2050 or 350 are creating a constructive policy framework.
The problem with the entire legislative and policy framework for dealing with climate change is not simply that it takes these targets as goals or policy objectives, but rather that it imagines that they can be systematically enforced. Capping and trading becomes the regulatory mechanism for this systematic reduction, and virtually everything introduced in Congress has been centrally organized around it. So was Kyoto, and negotiations for a successor, where the fundamental controversy is about whether the US, China, and India will agree to “binding” emissions targets.
For example, one thing you get out of all of these numbers is Lieberman Warner’s Climate Security Act (CSA). The CSA allows policymakers to embrace a big future goal. But as we wrote last week (here), it will do nothing until 2025. The goal serves as a fig leaf. You can agree or disagree with this critique, but you can’t dismiss it as mere snark.
I agree with you that we have to simplify. Michael’s criticism of setting long-term targets as the movement’s goals wasn’t that “80 X 50″ or that 350.org are too simplistic. Rather, it was that they were the wrong goals because they don’t deal with the difficult questions of investment, regulation, carbon pricing, and technology in the short-term, and instead give policymakers a fig leaf to effectively do nothing until 2025.
You asked what I would define as a simple alternative. I would say there are many. Google called for “RE<C” — renewable energy cheaper than coal. A better goal might be “clean energy cheaper than coal in China” since it is building two coal-fired power plants a week (while Europe is building 10 per year). We summed it up in our paper as “Fast, Clean, Cheap.” That’s how we need our energy to be. But let’s not let our desire for the right name — whether RE<C in C, or Fast Clean Cheap — distract us from the difficult conceptual, factual, and political questions about energy and climate policy.
I look forward to your response to these substantive issues.
Teryn
Yeah! Teryn, your thoughtful response is much appreciated–psyched to carry on the dialog so as to collaboratively craft more effective campaigns and more compelling messaging.
I won’t be able to give your response the thought and time it deserves, because I’m frankly slammed and short on time, so quick bullets below:
- You say that 350 and 80 by 50 targets “so far into the future as to be irrelevent.” Here’s the thing: this game (or part of it) is legislative. Congress, the UN, climate scientists, and the mass media often abbreviate the complexities of mitigation strategies–bills are discussed in shorthand, and the quick and dirty way to outline differences between them is to refer to mid-century reduction targets (Congress) or PPM stabilization targets (the UN). Saying 80% by 2050 is our way of saying to Congress “We’ll give you some political cover if your legislative efforts are built upon a foundation of sound science.” And Michael’s right, they responded pretty damn well to that…
- Our aim, more than anything, is to get the message across that no matter what our methods for carbon reduction, we must ground the entire process in the latest science. Our message is pretty simple—the trump cards in the climate crisis are the laws of physics and chemistry, so we might as well take our cues from science and work backwards from there.
- 2050 is indeed far away, but of course we don’t wait until 2048 and say, “Gee, we’ve got to cut a bunch of carbon now.” Mid-century targets come with roadmaps and interim targets attached—you’re far more well-versed in legislation than I am, so I’ll leave it at that.
- The great thing about this movement is that it’s diverse—lots of actors and organizations are out there, and together we’re thus able to cover a lot of ground. Of course no single campaignable and actionable “goal” that fits on a banner will fit all of your criteria for “relevance”, which is precisely why we don’t claim to be the only/best/most important thing in this incredible, exploding movement. Step It Up filled a niche, and where it lacked other groups can/should jump in to complement it. But to cut an effort down for not doing everything all at once doesn’t strike me as a good way to create a more successful movement.
- We try to be relatively agnostic when it comes to tax/invest/cap/trade—it’s quite simply not our area of expertise. It’s what you all are good at—figuring out how to get us there—to 80 by 50 or 350 or whatever. This is why I’m thrilled that you guys are out there, and why I hope we can figure out ways for the various elements of the movement not only to “work together” but to strategically create synergistic areas of overlap where we can do more than blog past/against eachother…
- Of course establishing 80 by 50 as a bright line isn’t creating a “constructive policy framework.” That’s not what we do, and of all organizations I would hope that Breakthrough would be able to see the strength of a “Movement as Network” model. But establishing a target does do is provide one standard against which to judge our progress, and is one reason that a BS bill like Lieberman-Warner hasn’t been embraced by enviro orgs and activists alike. And it’s a reason that other bills will emerge that are more adequate, bills like Markey’s iCAP which focuses on investment (!) and has mid-century reduction targets of 80% (!).
- Again, I completely agree with all of your/Breakthrough’s goals. But it’s crucial to understand that they are aren’t competitive with 80by50 or 350, but complementary—as in:
– Our BIG GOAL is stopping catastrophic climate change.
– We might do that by stabalizing global PPM at 350 or cutting US carbon emissions 80% by 2050
– We can hit these targets through a massive transitioning to clean energy. We do this by:
– investing to bring down the cost of renewables
– putting a price on carbon and making coal more expensive
– capping carbon emissions
– conservation/efficiency
– etc.
- I quite like Google’s RE<C initiative, as well as your Fast, Clean, and Cheap report, but such calls don’t translate all that well into something that Congress can act upon. If I tell my Senator to make renewable energy cheaper than coal in China, there going to dismiss me because I’m not speaking their legislative language.
- And here, I think, is the rub. We’ve got to speak each other’s languages. We’ve got to be willing to recognize that no one has all the solutions—not Congress, not Breakthrough, and not Step It Up or 350. But coming out swinging isn’t how you’ll make progress here. Of course you’re right in our need to develop a solid political strategy and take an uncompromising look at the facts, but my great fear is that groups and individuals with a lot of smarts and kickass analysis (like Breakthrough) will end up withering away, trolling in green echo-chambers, crafting late-night missives that reinforce organizational mantras almost as much as they alienate potential allies. The fact of the matter is that the climate movement doesn’t have the time for this kind of navel-gazing—and I for one would much rather figure out what we’re doing well and build off of that. Deeming the hard work and new engagement of tens of thousands of new climate activists as “irrelevent” isn’t just alienating, it’s fairly devoid of movement strategy, or even common courtesy. My guess is that if you all continue to take this tone with potential allies, your good ideas will fall upon deaf ears. I’m still listening, many have already stopped…
So let’s rock this thing together—I’d love to take this conversation out of the Blogosphere and into the real world, where we can actually get some things done…I know Breakthrough is in Oakland and me and some comrades are just across the Bay. Maybe we should have a little powow and brainstorm a way forward?
While I think the argument is overstreached and I heartily disagree with the focus of the solutions they propose, I actually agree with the Breakthrough bloggers block both on this (and their skeptism on carbon caps generally).
I think we need to differentiate however between the really great educational value of 350 for popular scientific education and it’s political value, which I think is much less.