There was never just one group of 4 individuals calling themselves “The Beatles” who rose to world stardom.There were multiples of each character performing as “John”, “Paul”, “George” and “Ringo”. Each part of the world appears to have had its own Beatles group, And even then, there were sometimes multiple characters within. They all looked identical to each other except for a few features here and there.But what was most pronounced was their fluctuating height differences.

Sounds  like perfect new allies for deniers and delayers,  along with old standbys like the Flat Earth Society,  and the people who insist that the moon landing was faked(warning: annoying video on autoplay).

Free marketeers and green-minded people tend to converge on a single belief — that electronic goods such as Apple iPhones and iPads are inherently unsustainable. Making such goods is only possible, the story goes, because of the unbearable mistreatment of workers who make those products, and the extraction of raw materials under environmentally destructive conditions. Treat workers fairly, and extract rare earths and such in ways that don’t degrade the ecology, and costs would explode — your iPad would carry the price tag of a small car.

This argument is sometimes made by those who don’t want to see anything done about the horrible treatment of workers in places like Foxconn in China, where nets have been placed to catch workers driven to attempting suicide by jumping from building windows and roofs. Sometimes it is made by those who think this whole technological civilization thing is a mistake. In both cases it is wrong.

Here is the truth: The single greatest cost component of both the iPhone and the iPad is neither labor nor materials, but profits. (For a full accounting see this paper [PDF].) Labor costs in poor nations such as China and South Korea are such a small percentage of total costs that they could be doubled or tripled without buyers even noticing. Material costs are significant, but still could be doubled without the increase falling outside the fluctuations prices of electronic goods suffer during normal functioning of the global system.

In short, a global system that treats workers decently could provide iThings for about the same as they cost now. A global system that treats the environment decently would increase the cost of iThings slightly, but not by an amount unaffordable for anyone who can pay for them today.

In 2010, about 73 percent of the costs of the iPhone were profits for Apple and Apple partners and suppliers, as were 47 percent of the costs of the iPad. In terms of labor, only about 2 percent of total costs were Chinese labor, and the same or less for labor in Korea and Taiwan. The rest were material costs, and costs for labor in the U.S., the E.U., Japan, and other rich nations where labor conditions are not comparable to those in China, Korea, or Taiwan. Material costs are more substantial than labor, but still less than profits, about 22 percent for the iPhone and about 31 percent for the iPad.

Doubling or tripling labor costs for iThings in poor nations would not even be noticeable compared to week-by-week variations in price. Doubling material costs to make those more sustainable (see * below for details) would be noticeable, though fluctuations of one-fifth to one-third are not unknown over the course of a year in the iThing market. And of course there is no reason, given the huge size of profit margins, that all of the increase should be absorbed by consumers.

So it is not true that physical or cost barriers prevent sustainable electronics. All we need is a system where human needs are more important than profits. Yeah, nothing difficult about that one, is there? But why would we expect problems that stem from a system that prioritizes profits for the 1% to be solved through minor tweaking that does not affect the interests of that 1%?

* The reasons I think doubling (at most) the cost of materials would allow sustainability are:

A) Many of the environmental costs of materials used in electronics are energy and water. Use of both can be reduced through increased efficiency. Energy can be provided from renewable sources rather than fossil fuels. To the extent water use can’t be drastically reduced, it can be recycled through distillation and reverse osmosis if necessary, the energy for this provided from waste heat or renewable generation.

B) Other significant sources of environmental footprints for electronics are high-impact industrial gases. Again, these may be used more efficiently, and in some cases lower-impact gases substituted. To the extent their use remains necessary, they can be captured after use and recycled, or alternatively incinerated.

C) Another significant source of impacts is mining. Here again, various tricks can reduce the need for high environmental impact metals, such as rare earths. For example, catalysts, compounding rare earth with more common metals, nanomaterials, and sometimes just clever shaping can allow smaller quantities of rare or toxic materials to achieve the same effects larger quantities achieve today. More importantly, recycling and assigning end-of-life responsibility to manufacturers and importers can reduce the need for new mining. Also importantly, the mining itself can be done in a more responsible manner. All of these can help insure a long-term supply of rare earths to maintain the electronics industry until substitutes for them are developed. And it is worth remembering that much of the time poor and working class families in poor nations are the ones to lose their homes, their health and even their lives to the toxic effects of mining.

My 2004 online resource, Cooling It! No Hair Shirt Solutions to Global Warming, deals with the issue of the physical potential for sustainability with today’s technology (well, at this point ,with almost decade-old technology). It includes a discussion specifically about sustainability in electronics and appliances.

Editor’s Note: For additional discussion of the labeling of “profit” in this piece and in the pie charts above, see this post.

Many claims have been made over the years about biochar. It certainly sounds like something that can help save our asses from the climate crisis. Take some waste from thinning trees to prevent fires, or straw from growing wheat or rice, or any other high-carbon waste. Partially burn it without air to power cooking stoves or provide some other kind of energy. Bury the resulting charcoal in fields to store the carbon, and improve soil structure. Voila, biopower that on net takes carbon out of the atmosphere and turns some of it into fossil carbon that is permanently removed from the carbon cycle. In essence, it is supposed to be a form of carbon sequestration that is permanent today, and makes agriculture more sustainable besides. Suck it, global warming!

Unfortunately, this is completely unproven. The heart of any claim about biochar is that it permanently and on net stores carbon in the form of charcoal. No net permanent storage, no net sequestration. A review of the literature [PDF] by Biofuels Watch shows there have been a grand total of five peer-reviewed field tests of biochar where soil carbon was measured before and after biochar was applied. None of these tests used charcoal from the low-pollution charcoal-making stoves that have been developed for use by small farmers to create biochar. Nonetheless, looking at what is out there, in two of the five trials, carbon showed no increase after the application of biochar compared to before, or less increase than competing methods of improving the soil, such as adding manure or sawdust. A third trial showed no improvement in two cases, and an increase in one. The results in the other two trials were mixed — showing more carbon in a majority of cases, but less in a minority. So if we look at peer-reviewed field trials, biochar results so far range from outright failure to unreliable. We need to do extensive study to figure out what works and what doesn’t before we move prematurely to deploy. It is a shame, because anything that could stave off oncoming disaster is worthwhile. But there is no point in deploying something like this before we know what versions work, and what versions are quack remedies. Note, by the way, that these trials were in warm climates, and biochar probably is less effective in cold climates than warm.

What about studies other than field tests? Well, those can be divided into three categories, and none of them outweigh field tests.

There are a number of studies based on Terra Preta, the black earth created by a complex system of slash-and-burn agriculture once used in the Amazon. That did indeed work, and it would be wonderful if we knew how to recreate it. Unfortunately, long-ago massacres and destruction of indigenous nations in the Amazon mean that we have no idea of the ancient technologies that produced the Terra Preta biological cycle. Burning wood or straw in high-tech charcoal stoves is NOT the same thing, and so far has not been shown to produce the same results.

There are also studies based on forest fires. Researchers estimate how much carbon there should be in the soil if all the charcoal produced by a forest fire was retained, measure the carbon actually present, and — voila! — find around that much carbon in the soil. Note that this kind of measurement is very sensitive to assumptions about how much carbon should exist. And when field trials are possible, it is definitely not something that should outweigh field trial results.

Similarly, laboratory trials produce charcoal, and then measure charcoal lifespan under various conditions. The problem is that such trials don’t measure how charcoal added to the soil affects existing biological stores of carbon, and whether soil already in the ground will be released by the addition of charcoal. And we don’t really know how comparable laboratory charcoal is to what would be produced in field conditions. These kind of details matter intensely.

There are other problems with biochar. For example, if it is not applied carefully, it can blow away in the form of dust, and as a form of black carbon, constitute a much more powerful global warming “gas” than carbon dioxide. There are real problems with sources too. Peer-reviewed studies have show that forest thinning for fire prevention at too high a level can actually reduce the ability of forests to store carbon in many cases. From a climate standpoint and an energy standpoint, most waste straw may be better used to create single- and two-story buildings (or to produce strawboard) than as biochar feedstocks. There are sustainable levels of waste wood and waste straw that are suitable for biomass use, as well as some animal and urban waste. But the ratio of sustainable wet waste to sustainable dry waste may prove far more suitable for processing in methane digesters to create biogas than to be burned in special stoves to produce biochar.

One technique some of the more subtle global warming delayers and deniers use to delay action is to claim we should do very little now, but instead research and look for a magic solution. (Hi, Breakthrough Institute!) When it comes to efficiency, conservation, solar and wind energy, mature sustainable agriculture, and forestry techniques, and other known means of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, they are dead wrong. Biochar, on the other hand, is one technique we should NOT be deploying now; it is a technique we should be field testing extensively and massively funding research on. Because if we could make it work, biochar, combined with the other things we already know how to do, really could help save our asses, just as its advocates claim. But that is only true if we figure out how to do it right, and what the proper sources are, and don’t deploy quack remedy versions in advance of knowing what “doing it right” means.

Most of the plot advances come when characters, good and bad act out of self-interest. Two exceptions are “Kris Kringle” who is soon revealed to suffer from a delusion of being Santa Claus, and Sawyer, the evil psychologist who acts out of ego-driven malice and hurts other for no gain other than personal satisfaction. With those exceptions everyone has motives an economics 101 student would recognize.

Doris Walker hires Kris Kringle for the Macy’s parade when her original choice turns up drunk. She keeps him as the store Santa because he seems well qualified to play the role, and she is overwhelmingly busy and glad not spend the time finding someone else. When Kringle starts directing shoppers to other stores if Macy’s does not have what they want (or is not their best choice), H.R. Macey keeps him on because it turns out to be great public relations and advertising combined. When, thanks to Sawyer’s villainy, Kringle ends up in a sanity hearing, a combination of political survival and not wishing to disappoint their children result in the judge and prosecutor alike taking it much easier on Kringle than they otherwise would. Kringle is saved when postal workers decide to get rid of the truckload of mail addressed to Santa by delivering it to the courthouse. This delivery gives the judge an excuse to rule that Kringle has been recognized as Santa by an established authority.  

Isn’t Fred Gailey another altruist? After all, he leaves a big law firm to take on the apparently hopeless case of defending Kringle. But, he does have a huge personal motive. He wants to win Doris’s love. Even though she says she is disappointed in him for letting idealism trump common sense, it is made pretty obvious in the movie that this fight is Gailey’s only chance with her. In fact this is a dig by the writers at 1947 conventional wisdom about the relations between men and women. In the end, Doris can only become open to romance by giving up her “silly common sense” to the point of actually believing in Santa Claus

Don’t the writers give up the sharp edges at this point? All this self-interested behavior does lead to a happy ending for everyone except the wicked Sawyer, in what could be taken as an analogy to the invisible hand of the free market. Only, I think the ending is as clever as the rest of the film. In the same happy ending that seems to arise from something very like what today we call the Efficient Market Hypothesis(EMH), it also turns out that loveable old Kringle really is Santa Claus.

The basic idea, elpipes, as developed by Roger Faulkner is to place HVDC lines inside insulated pipes, which can then be buried underground or placed just above ground rather than raised on transmission lines. No EMF (not that the evidence for EMF damage, especially from DC lines is not weak). No chance of living creatures bridging uninsulated lines and frying themselves along with expensive transmission capacity.

Unlike other forms of underground HVDC, it can reach high capacity with only passive cooling for up to 12 GW underground, and reach up 25 GW above ground. Beyond that active cooling is needed, but less than with other systems. No gas insulation. It uses simple aluminum wire for transmission, making up for aluminum’s lower electrical capability per cubic foot by using more metal.

Overall the cost would be lower per mile than any other form of underground DC transmission, and (Faulkner claims) lower in many cases than overhead transmission. Also it is claimed that elpipes require less maintenance, and are far easier to maintain other forms of underground electricity. (Maintenance costs are one well known weakness of underground transmission.)

In terms of impact, elpipes need a corridor with about same characteristics as a natural gas pipeline — up to 60 feet total. These don’t need to be kept totally clear, but clear of trees and tall or moderate shrubs. Run along highways or railroad right of ways, and existing logging roads the impact would be zero. Run through the desert, plains or meadowlands they could be buried underground and most (though not all) of the natural plant life allowed to grow back over them. Run through forests and woods (other than under logging roads), there would be impact because of that 60 foot tree-free (but not grass or low-shrub free) strip. But it would be less than any other form of HVDC transmission. And there is no Kilowatt Fairy, no BTU Bunny. Right now we get half our electricity from coal. If replacing that with something far less polluting requires long distance transmission, it is unreasonable to hold that to a zero impact standard.

Of course, something that only exists on paper always looks cheaper, simpler and cleaner than a real world product. See Admiral Hyman Rickover’s 1953 testimony on real and academic reactors [PDF]. But papers [sub. req.] on elpipes have been published [PDF] in a variety of professional journals and presented at professional conferences. Rodger Faulkner appears to have strong real-world professional credentials. Without guarantees, I strongly suggest this technology is worth further investigation.

If I were an entrepreneurial billionaire, this is what I’d do:

• First, I’d get a qualified in-house employee to do a quick check for obvious flaws.
• If it passed that, I’d get someone to do a rigorous preliminary check for non-obvious flaws — hiring a consultant if necessary.
• If it passed both preliminary checks I’d put together a team to do a full check, consulting Mr. Faulkner, and running a rigorous simulation if appropriate.
• If the concept passed that test, I’d put together a business plan, and fund a prototype.

I have some feel for transmission concepts, and this definitely merits investigation. It is the nature of innovation that not everything meriting investigation is worth building, but I suspect this will be.

Faulkner has also proposed a passive arc-free breaker whose merits [sub. req.] I won’t judge, not even on a tentative and preliminary basis.

Since the CDM home page of the U.N. is triumphantly promoting a new study on the benefits of CDM [PDF], I thought it only fair to devote a post this argument for the other side. Unfortunately, this new study proved blatantly dishonest, but in way that requires a little teasing out. The main source for the study conclusions was a non-expert opinion survey, which by definition cannot be a way to determine facts. This is not immediately obvious, because the study actually list five types of source.

Of those source types, one consist of project design documents, another of the CDM pipeline, and another of the CDM project database. Those are perfectly valid sources for determining what the CDM projects set out to achieve, and that is what they are used for.

However when measuring success of those goals, the main source is a survey. In citing that survey, no information about study design or methodology is referenced. Instead a direct link to the survey itself is all that is included. It is possible to fake your way through the survey to see the questions (not exactly a great sign of survey integrity). I let them know that what I was doing in comments so that they know to throw my answers out. I have included these questions at the bottom of this post, so that nobody else needs to do this to read the question. You will notice that the questions are qualitative. None of the questions ask whether the organization the person is answering the questions for has any method in place to evaluate the particular whether the particular benefits asked about in the survey were measure. None of the questions ask whether the persons specifying benefits has qualifications to do so. (No, job title is not enough to determine expertise.) Just from the questions, it is clear that is a survey of non-expert opinion. As such it tells nothing about facts, and any conclusion drawn from it about benefits of CDM are invalid. If  the survey is valid, then it provides a sounding of CDM industry opinion, which would be interesting, but does not refute rigorous studies of actual CDM results.

Unfortunately, even without a methodology description, what can determined just from my ability to fake my way through the survey shows a methodological flaw. That flaw is not that non-CDM people can take the survey. Asking for contact information and job title should be able to screen answers from people like me out, even when they do not (as I did) let them know in comments what is happening. But it means that anyone within any organization legitimately operating a CDM project can take the survey.  That means that the survey takers are self-selected. Even as an industry sounding (and remember this survey is being cited as a source of facts and not of opinion) self-selection will tend to bias answers favorably toward CDM.  Plus there is a network effect. The survey is sponsored by the core institution responsible for CDM upon whose leadership the people taking the survey depend. In social psychology this is well know to bias responses positively. 

Note that all these problems would tend to occur even given honest intentions by responders. But the responders have to know that their industry faces strong opposition, and that certain answers will tend help their industry image, while others would tend to hurt that image. It is possible that survival considerations might also bias answers, especially if taking the survey is a task assigned by a supervisor.  The extremely qualitative nature of the questions are likely to make both conscious and unconscious bias easier.

Now there is fifth source, published research and analysis. Much the additional published research cited is based on the CDM pipeline, database and other information files before the projects actually returned results, and thus does not address the issue of whether the projects actually had benefits, only of benefits claimed for the future. Most of the remainder addressed secondary questions like the “the low hanging fruit” issue, and “cost of technology” and mostly did not address the question of whether the benefits occurred in the first place. The one outside study that addressed additionality (whether the just so story the project told was true) did so by analysis of impact on profitability for the first 16 CDM projects issuing registered CERs. As my previous post showed, CDM projects often keep an extra set of books for CDM purposes.

In short, this study trumpeted so loudly at the top of the CDM home page does nothing to refute the strong evidence against CDM. It may provide an interesting data point on the integrity of those running the CDM system.

1. Dear Sir/Madam,

In order to understand more about the CDM and its benefits as a whole,the UNFCCC secretariat is gathering information about registered Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects. In particular their contribution to the transfer of technology and knowledge and sustainable development benefits. Hence, you are requested to respond to a few (8) questions on project(s) in your custody.
Confidentiality: Responses to the survey will be held in the strictest confidence and will not be attributable to any one individual or organization. The information provided will be used for the survey analysis only and will have NO effect on any project or the issuance of CERs. Your kind contribution in answering the questions below is
appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your participation.

UNFCCC Secretariat
Martin-Luther King Str.8
Bonn, Germany
Email: cdmji-projectinfo@unfccc.int

2. In considering TECHNOLOGY in the CDM, when in your view can an organization say they “have” a technology?

When they USE the technology(ies)
When they have KNOWLEDGE of the technology(ies)
When they USE and have KNOWLEDGE of the technology(ies)
None of the above
If “None of the above”, please specify an alternative?

TECHNOLOGY – could include equipment, machinery, tools, techniques,crafts, systems or methods of organization
USE – could include own and/or operate equipment or processes that use the technology
KNOWLEDGE – could include shared or exclusive participation in patents, licenses, training programs, academic papers, etc. relating
to the technology

3. In this survey, you will be asked about MAJOR development benefits and USE of foreign equipment and/or knowledge, for each CDM project in your custody. It is therefore important you select the correct CDM project.

Please select a SINGLE project from the drop down list below.
Tip: Type the UNFCCC project reference number to find your project!

[LIST OF SEVERAL HUNDREDS PROJECT TYPES]
Please select a SINGLE project from the drop down list below. Tip: Type the UNFCCC project reference number to find your project!
If you cannot find your project in the list ab
ove. Select “Not found” and enter the project number and title below (max. 100 chars.)

4. What do you consider to be the MAJOR development benefits incurred as result of your CDM project? Please choose up to 4, in order of importance.

Use of equipment and/or knowledge from another country
Financial benefits for the local or regional economy
Creation of jobs
Investment in local or regional infrastructure (roads, housing, schools etc.)
Engagement of local people (decision making, consultation)
Empowerment of women, children and the elderly
Efficient utilization of natural resources
Reduction in noise, odors, dust, air and/or water pollutants
Improvement or protection of natural resources
Availability of electricity, water, heating, cooling, lighting etc.
Promotion of renewable energy
Improvement of working conditions or human rights
Promotion of education or training
Improvement of domestic health and safety
Alleviation of poverty
Other
If “Other”, please specify

5. Are there any development benefits that would have occurred anyway (i.e. if there was NO CDM project at all)?

Use of equipment and/or knowledge from another country
Financial benefits for the local or regional economy
Creation of jobs
Investment in local or regional infrastructure (roads, housing, schools etc.)
Engagement of local people (decision making, consultation)
Empowerment of women, children and the elderly
Efficient utilization of natural resources
Reduction in noise, odors, dust, air and/or water pollutants
Improvement or protection of natural resources
Availability of electricity, water, heating, cooling, lighting etc.
Promotion of renewable energy
Improvement of working conditions or human rights
Promotion of education or training
Improvement of domestic health and safety
Alleviation of poverty
Other

6. Did (or will) your CDM project make use of any equipment and/or knowledge from another country (i.e. other than the country in which the project is located)?

Yes
No
Not known
If “Not known” please specify?

7. Please provide the following confidential personal data:

Please enter your name, organization, tel. number, email address and
affiliation to the CDM (e.g. project developer, investor etc.)
Name
Organization
Tel number (incl. dialing code)
Email address
Affiliation to CDM

8. Do you have anything to add about the CDM project that you have been involved with?

CDM works by having a polluter in a poor nation accept CDM money, then compares their actual situation to a story about what might have been if they had not been paid that money. The claim then undergoes a certification process. If the story is accepted as true, the process generates a Certified Emissions Reduction (CER), which can be used as permission to pollute within rich Kyoto signatories. Any approved claims based on untrue stories  increase greenhouse gas pollution, because they act as permissions to pollute.

This has worked out as badly might be expected. Almost 70 percent of CERs approved as of Nov. 1, 2011 were based on highly concentrated HFC, and N2O greenhouse gases. The scandals around these gases have grown so large that they will no longer be approved to generate new CDM CERs after mid 2013, though China is trying to use climate extortion to push back against this. 

Further, prominent institutions and individuals who helped create CDM have admitted it is not working. In wonky jargon, The Independent Evaluation Group(IEG) of the World Bank has admitted that these offsets are a failure:

… the additionality screening process has been widely criticized as ponderous, costly, and ineffective. Environmentalists press for stricter screening, investors for more streamlined procedures. The current system may combine the worst of both worlds: high transaction cost with substantial nonadditionality. A growing consensus views determination of additionality as quixotic at the project level.

“Additionality” is simply a term for the degree to which the story a CDM project is true. To the extent that the story about what would have happened without CDM money is false, the project is not “additional.” A partially “additional” project is based on a partially false story. A completely “non-additional” project is based on a completely false story.

There are even franker admissions from people in a position to know which came out in the Wikileaks releases. Statements made confidentially to State Department employees were included in a released cable that was never expected to be seen publicly. This cable is temporarily unavailable at the wikileaks site, but fortunately the main quotes were preserved in at least two blogs.

Payal Parekh’s quotes are so juicy, and he gives such great translations from jargon that I’m tempted to just quote the whole thing. Instead, I suggest you read at his blog, and will extract just a few quotes:

[Somak Ghosh, President of Corporate Finance & Development Banking at Yes Bank], pointed out that no bank would finance a project which is viable only with carbon revenues because of the uncertainty of the registration process, unclear guidelines on qualifying CDM projects and because carbon revenue is only a by-product revenue stream of the main operations of the company.

My translation: Banks don’t finance projects that can qualify for CDM money without false stories, because projects that would truly qualify for CDM are too risky …

He [Ghosh] admitted that project developers prepare two balance sheets to secure funding: one showing the viability of the project without the CDM benefit (which is what the bank looks at) and another demonstrating the non-viability of the project without the CDM benefit.

No translation needed on that one.

At a seminar on CDM in Mumbai, R K Sethi, Member Secretary of the [Indian] National CDM Authority and the present Chairman of the CDM Executive Board, publicly admitted that the National CDM Authority takes the “project developer at his word” for clearing the “additionality” barriers

No translation needed there either, if you remember that the “additionality” barriers basically consist of not lying.

There are a number of attempts to defend CDM. One is to argue that, regardless of whether it benefits the climate or not, it has transferred nearly 150 billion dollars to the poor over the past decade or so. Unfortunately it turns out that less than one third of money spent on CDM ends up spent on operational and capital costs for CDM projects. Around half of CDM money ends up the  hands of brokers and consultants and other sources outside the nation where the project take place.  Much of the rest pays for transaction costs, and profits which ends up in the hands of the rich in nations where the projects take place. In short, CDM is mostly a transfer from the rich to the rich, not to the poor [PDF].

Another defense is to acknowledge problems, but to claim that CDM flaws are not fundamental to turning story-telling into precise financial instruments, but rather merely a problem of transaction costs. Those making that claim want to solve the CDM problem by scaling offsets up, by making them bigger. One example would be project standards, also called “aggregate offsets.” The idea is to set up a rigorous standard for a type of offset, like HFC. Any project that meets that standard then qualifies to generate CERs. That just multiplies the original flaw. The story on which the “standard” is based can be just as false as a project story. And there is plenty of room for game-playing in determining whether or not a project qualifies for a standard.

There is one last argument some defenders of CDM make. They admit minor problems but deny major ones. If you follow the link at the top of this post to the main CDM web site, it triumphantly features a study that proclaims wonderful benefits for CDM. If you actually download that study it is so blatantly dishonest as to deserve a discussion of its own — my next post on Grist. The short version however is that its primary source for CDM benefits is a survey of non-expert opinion, which it takes as evidence of facts.

In short, in spite of the attempts to revive CDM, it remains a miserable failure — at least if you believe the object of CDM is to help the climate, rather than to make money. And CDM is the most rigorous type of offset project that exists — subject to an extensive multi-institutional series of checks. I’m familiar with no non-CDM offset that is not far worse, subject to much weaker processes than CDM. So that can be extended to say that offsets, not just the CDM form of offsets, are a miserable failure.

I find myself in the glass is 100% full crowd. Well, “crowd” is not exactly the word. Because this study by some of the nations leading experts got the technology wrong, and greatly underestimated potential savings. No, the experts were not stupid, not short-sighted, not missing the obvious. They gave a good set of answers to question they were asked.  It is not even the fault of those doing the asking.   The study was done for the state of California. That made the sensible  question: what technologies available today or in the near future can the state of California deploy to reduce greenhouse emissions? Unfortunately, that question meant that technologies existing today but mostly needing deployment on a national scale were excluded from the study.

One example: the study looked at both nuclear and renewable electricity and found that either (or both combined) still need a lot of natural gas as supplementation. Renewable electricity requires natural gas when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.  Nuclear power provides mainly baseload electricity and needs supplementation when demand exceeds baseload. The study included good reasons biomass did not help in this respect. What the study could not consider, because it confined itself to California, was long distance transmission that connected California to far-away states.  There is wind available in the Midwest when it is not blowing in California, and sun available in California when the wind is not blowing in the Midwest. Both regions would have more reliable renewable energy if they were connected by high capacity long distance transmission. And while I remain an opponent of increased use of nuclear electricity,  the same connection would increase baseload as a percent of demand, which would reduce the need for natural gas backup for nuclear plants as well. High Voltage Direct Current transmission has been a mature technology for at least half a century,  but the study as defined could not consider its possible role in reducing emissions from backup for a renewable or nuclear grid.

Long distance transmission in the context of a renewable grid also means most of the time backup is needed is for very short periods(paywall), less than two hours of peak generation, mostly less than a half hour. Utility scale batteries can handle storage at that level today. In addition, because the gas generators would be run fewer total hours than the study scenario, concentrated over more hours at one time, it would be possible to use new generation commercially available combined cycle turbines that start up with 15 minutes as single cycle turbines, but bring the second cycle on-line within 45 minutes. The overall efficiency with which natural gas was burned could be well above the ~one third estimated by the study. Thus, short term storage combined with natural gas backup could result in far fewer emissions over a long distance than in one state.

One other possibility the study seems to have overlooked that could be done in one state: curtailment. If low carbon electricity is built with capacity greater than the peak needed, then even in low wind and sun conditions it can provide more electricity. The excess can simply be discarded during high sun or wind conditions. The same thing can be done with nuclear generation. In the U.S., nuclear plants average well above 90% of peak capacity.  French nukes run at about 70% of peak capacity. This raises their capital costs, but the tradeoff is that nuclear power can provide a much higher percent of total generation there than here. (For those who wondering if I’ve suddenly become pro-nuclear: no. I’m just pointing out the limitations of this study underestimate the potential of nuclear generation as well as of solar and wind.)

Electricity generation is only one area where the one-state focus underestimates potential reductions. Another is in heavy vehicle transport. It rightly points out that while short-haul trucking might be electrified (though even there it is more difficult than with passenger vehicles), electrifying long haul trucking is close to hopeless. But there is another possibility: Alan Drake has been pointing out for years that if we electrify freight rail (which the study advocates) and also make other improvements to freight rail, including double tracking along the most heavily used routes, signal upgrades, more switchyards, more freightyards, bottleneck removal and so on, we could switch about 85% of long-haul truck freight to rail(pdf). We would still use trucks to move freight to the rail system and from the rail system, and for short haul needs. Because electric freight trains could move at about 110 mph, if we upgrade rail reliability at the same time, end-to-end delivery time would remain the same or even drop compared to truck-only today. But, upgrading a rail system in only one state limits how useful the upgrade is. Freight sent from or to other states is still  hitting all the non-California bottlenecks.  To upgrade freight rail properly would require about a trillion dollar investment at a national level. An examination of the money spent annually on long haul trucking will show that is an investment that can pay for itself easily at the national level, but probably not in California alone.  A similar case could be made for high speed passenger rail as replacement for much air traffic. 

Now again,  this is not a criticism of the experts who compiled the report. They answered the question they were asked, and in spite of  my quibble about curtailment came as close to an accurate answer as humanly possible. Nor is this a critique of state officials who commissioned the report.  Concentrating on issues they have power to affect is their job. But it is a critique of anyone who looks at this report and says “well, 60% is the upper limit of the greenhouse gas reduction that could be made in California with today’s technology.”    Because the study does not examine the limits of what is technologically possible to reduce emissions in California. It studies the technological limits of what California could do on its own to reduce emissions, rather than as part of a national effort.

Elisabeth doesn’t have much to feel guilty about, really. I guess instead of taking a plane, she should have taken the high-speed rail. Oh wait, we don’t have any existing true high-speed rail lines in the U.S. Well, certainly she could have taken light rail from the airport to her final destination, or maybe rented an electric car. Oh wait, again. There is no light rail on that route. The airport doesn’t rent electric cars, plus we don’t have the infrastructure to fast-recharge or swap an electric battery several times between the airport and the wedding location.

In short, Elisabeth had no better choice. And offsetting her carbon emissions does nothing to change that. After all, we did not get into this mess via individual consumer choice, and we won’t get out of it that way either.

The road to our current predicament was long, and built on public policy and public investment. Take the gradual reduction of freight rail in this country, for example. We have less than half the miles of freight-rail track we had at the peak of freight-rail shipping; that is a result of a massive public investment in public highways — which do not in fact pay for themselves [PDF]. In our system, rail pays property tax and highways don’t, much of the so-called gas tax is really diverted sales tax, and railroads also pay fuel taxes but don’t get fuel tax money back the way highways do.

Similarly, passenger rail in this country suffers from that same competition for public resources by highways. It also competes with massive subsidized parking for cars and trucks [PDF]. It further still reels from the deliberate destruction of trolley systems that once existed all over the country. The latter happened due to a combination of a requirement that electric utilities (which owned many of the trolley systems) divest them, with a campaign to purchase and destroy trolleys by General Motors, Standard Oil, and Goodyear Tires.

The bottom line: Consumer demand follows spending on public goods. It does not lead it. For instance: At a certain point, consumer demand may have driven the growth of the internet, but it came into existence, and grew large enough to attract consumer demand to begin with, almost entirely due to military and university spending.

In this context, how do we drive change?

The climate crisis is one of the great issues of the 21st century. Slavery was one of the great issues of the 19th. Certain utopian communes at that time raised their own cotton and avoided buying any slave-made products. They were pioneers in treating political issues as a matter of personal consumer virtue. In contrast: Harriet Tubman, who wore slave-made cotton clothes, actually infiltrated slave territory and freed hundreds of slaves. Frederick Douglass, who wore slave-made clothes and used slave-grown sugar, was one of the great orators of his era and successfully promoted the abolitionist cause.

If you were supporting the anti-slavery movement in the 19th century, where would your money have been better spent — supporting the communes that ran on the principles of personal virtue, or backing Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass? If you wanted to go beyond donations to personal action, which example would have been better to follow? I would have to go with Tubman and Douglass.

Setting an example by doing some simple, logical things to reduce an individual environmental footprint is wonderful. But ultimately, we will not make up, through private spending or lifestyle changes, for the fact that we currently don’t invest enough in public goods. Nor will we privately make up for the fact that much of our public spending is directed to the wrong public goods.

Contrary to the famous Dick Cheney quote, energy efficiency is not a matter of personal virtue. The answer to collective political failure is political action.

It is not as though most of those concerned with airline emissions want to eliminate air travel. We want to keep it from growing beyond its current level, and to substitute land-based electric transportation where possible. Some of us want to put an end to stupid wars that are responsible for many aircraft emissions. Some of us also want to curtail the tax breaks and airport space for corporate and luxury jets — air yachts.

Instead of either purchasing offsets or rolling her own, Elisabeth might consider donating to the Institute for Policy Studies, Rising Tide, or other groups that combine concern for the environment with opposition to war and opposition to the growth of the 1% at the expense of the 99%.