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We’ll need a lot of Socolow and Pacala’s wedges

The short answer is: "Not today -- not even close."

The long answer is the subject of this post.

Regular readers know that the nation and the world currently lack the political will to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at 450 ppm or even 550 ppm.

The political impossibility is also obvious from anyone familiar with Princeton's "stabilization wedges" [PDF] -- and if you aren't, you should be (technical paper here [PDF], less technical one here [PDF]). The wedges are a valuable conceptual tool for showing the immense scale needed for the solution (although they have analytical flaws).

Of course, if solving the climate problem were politically possible today, I would have found something more useful to do with my time (as, I expect, would you). But 450 ppm or lower is certainly achievable from an economic and technological perspective. Indeed, that is the point of the wedges discussion, since they rely on existing technology, and the conclusion to Hell and High Water.

The purpose of my last post on the adaptation trap was to make clear that 800 to 1,000 ppm, which is where we are headed, is a catastrophe ar beyond human imagining, one that makes a mockery of the word "adaptation," that has a "cost" far beyond that considered by any traditional economic cost-benefit analysis. It is a rationally and morally impossible choice. So too, I think, is 550 ppm, assuming we could stop there -- which as I argued, we probably can't, thanks to the carbon cycle feedbacks like the melting tundra.

What needs to be done?

Gore-y climate ads are coming soon to a TV near you

While it is not true that Al Gore is running for president (honestly, how do these rumors get started?), it is true that his Alliance for Climate Protection has officially launched a new “we” campaign. The ad campaign aims to spend $300 million over three years to create a sense of both urgency and solvability […]

Potentially a long-term option for putting waste heat to use

RealClimate has a good introductory post on air capture, which they explain as:

The idea would be to let people emit the carbon dioxide at the source but then capture it directly from the atmosphere at a separate facility.

This is going to be a relatively expensive and complicated strategy for decades -- and, of course, you need a place to put the carbon dioxide. That said, a lot of work is going on to see if one can do air capture driven by heat.

Why does that matter? The world has a lot of zero carbon waste heat not currently being used for anything. Indeed, U.S. thermal power plants alone throw away as much energy in waste heat as Japan uses for every purpose! That's more than 20 quads. And that doesn't even count the heat thrown away in industrial processes. Now, the smartest thing to do with that heat, for the next few decades, is obviously either generate electricity with it or use it for heating buildings or industrial processes.

Transit investment should and will be a part of the peak oil solution

Joseph Romm has made a number of very good points in his new Salon piece (and accompanying Gristmill post) on the problem of peak oil. He is, in my view, quite correct that oil prices will continue to increase based on supply and demand fundamentals. He is right that alternative oil source development would be […]

Paper mags go green(ish) for one month

The third annual “Green Issue” of Vanity Fair has arrived: Vanity, all is VanityAlthough Madonna graces the cover, the story inside makes no mention of greenness … including her “eco-song” and headlining gig last summer at Live Earth. Altogether an interesting choice for the “green issue,” though I applaud the absence of sweater belts. The […]

Protesters arrested outside N.C. coal plant

Eight protesters were Tased and arrested after locking themselves to bulldozers at a Duke Energy coal plant in North Carolina Tuesday morning. Activists say the plant under construction is, in short, a terrible idea. “In the face of catastrophic climate change, building a new coal plant is tantamount to signing a death sentence for our […]

Thoughts on the newly announced ‘we’ campaign

So Al Gore announced a $300 million 3-year effort "aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions."

My question is, wouldn't it be better to spend that money on building grassroots organizations pushing for climate change legislation instead of spending it mostly, I presume, on advertising? If $100 million was spent each year on grassroots organizations in 30 major cities, that would work out to $3 million per each major metropolitan area, enough for a decent-sized effort to organize citizens to push their legislators.

Or how about setting up some think tanks and media outlets, as the conservative movement did? Or is raising money for ads much easier than raising money for grassroots organizing? Color me confused.

Chinese miners and our appetite for cheap crap

As the United States has outsourced its industrial base to China over the last two decades, millions of manufacturing jobs have disappeared. But the trend has also allowed us to shed a lot of unpleasantness: industrial waste, air pollution, etc. The move also eased the burden on our electrical grid. The energy needed to produce […]

Bush admin finalizes development-friendly wetlands rules

The Bush administration has finalized rules for wetlands development that encourage developers to restore or create new wetlands when old ones are destroyed, sometimes far from the original site. While it sounds innocent enough on its face, opponents of the controversial approach say that natural streams and wetlands are more complex than simply wet places, […]

Gore will run for president as independent, sources tell Grist

[UPDATE: This news item is a joke. Happy April Fools’ Day!] You might want to sit down for this: Al Gore will announce his candidacy for president this week, knowledgeable sources tell Grist. There’s an inconvenient truth for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Gore believes the two Democrats and Republican John McCain aren’t giving climate […]