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The history of the ‘safety valve’ debate

The new publication from E&E News, ClimateWire, ($ub. req'd), has a long article on the "safety valve" debate and its history. I will reprint it in its entirety below because

1. The issue is important and not going away.
2. It is the most thorough piece I've seen.
3. I was interviewed at length for it.
4. One of my quotes they used is not something I would have said in a short interview.

First, some background: I have blogged repeatedly on why a safety valve is a bad idea. However, the reporter called me because he said that a number of people in the Clinton administration said I was a key player in the discussions leading up to Kyoto, in which the administration ultimately rejected a safety valve (or price ceiling on carbon emissions permits).

The No. 1 highlight of my time in the administration was at the October 6, 1997, "White House Conference on Climate Change," during my brief tenure as acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy. At 12:40 p.m. [I kept the ticket and wrote the time and the quote on the back], the president said, "I'm convinced the people in my Energy Department labs are absolutely right." He was talking about the 5-Lab study that I oversaw, which found that the United States could return to 1990 levels of carbon dioxide emissions by 2010 without raising the nation's overall energy bill -- if we had an aggressive technology deployment effort.

Rather than me giving a solipsistic explanation of what happened, you can read an account by Art Rosenfeld (the first article, his autobiography), now California energy commissioner, then science adviser to the assistant secretary. Or not.

I was certainly proud of my role in the administration. Economic agencies like the Treasury Department and Council of Economic Advisers rarely lose policy debates. But they did this time. That said, I was hardly the main reason they lost.

In fact, as I recall, President Clinton explained at the Georgetown conference that the main reason he didn't believe his economic agencies' gloomy predictions for the economic impact of Kyoto was this: They had made similarly gloomy predictions about the impact of his balanced budget bill, which, instead of causing an economic slowdown as predicted, created millions of jobs.

That said, the subsequent incident described in the ClimateWire article is the No. 2 highlight of my time in the administration, although I foolishly didn't keep the piece of paper. Anyway, here is the article (for ease of reading, I won't bother indenting it):

E.U. likely to cut subsidies for farmers

With crop prices through the roof and scientific concerns being raised about the greenness of biofuels, various European countries have cut back tax breaks and subsidies for farmers — and now the European Union as a whole is planning to follow suit.

The SOZEV/train combo commute

Pete has the coolest-looking SOZEV (Single-Occupant Zero-Carbon Emission Vehicle) in Seattle. (Click the photo to the right for a larger view.) It has turned a sweat-inducing, 45-minute slog up a killer hill into a comfortable 10-minute cruise. He rides to the Sounder commuter train station from his house and then from downtown to his office east of Seattle. Surfing the net while commuting by train is a concept that appeals to me. I wonder how well the free wi-fi concept is actually working out ...

Pete said he would let me test-ride it, so I jumped at the chance and met him downtown. A hybrid bike's top speed, like its weight, is not a very relevant indicator of overall performance. This one can go a lot faster than it should, but I suppose that's true for every motorcycle and car in the world as well. The windscreen (which reminds me of the canopy on an F-16) makes it a little too aerodynamically clean, especially when going downhill.

Some bike seats can be, ah, "sucky for your sex organs," but this one feels like you're sitting in a BarcaLounger, and a laptop fits nicely behind it. If there were such things as protected bike lanes, we would all be riding rigs similar to this, replete with over-the-head fairings, turn signals, and electrically heated clothing. Entrepreneurs have not realized it yet, but with that much battery power, all kinds of things become feasible. Heated clothing could keep you warm and toasty in the coldest weather, negating the need to bundle up for the start of a ride and strip down toward the end of it. Turn signals would negate the need to take a hand off your brakes to signal (as cars race toward you from behind). With this much power, you can also light a bike up like a Christmas tree.

Denver hopes to reduce car emissions by encouraging better driving

The city of Denver has unveiled a “Driving Change” pilot program designed to reduce vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions by encouraging drivers to ease off the lead foot. Starting in May, 400 public and private Denver vehicles, including that of Mayor John Hickenlooper, will have a device installed to monitor time spent braking, idling, accelerating, and speeding. […]

ECO:nomics: Quick observations

The programs today are stacked up, one after another, 30 min. apiece. As a result, there’s not much opportunity to blog about them — I’m struggling just to take notes. Two quick observations: I expected, coming to this, that it would be an opportunity for CEOs to robotically repeat talking points programmed into their heads […]

Conventional milk contains toxics, says the USDA

The Organic Center acts as a kind of shadow USDA, digesting the latest peer-reviewed research on organic food, translating it into English, and issuing summary reports. Consumers won’t want to miss the center’s newest one on pesticide residues [PDF]. It contains one of those handy guides on which conventional fruits and veggies convey the most […]

A post-petroleum American dream

"This craziness is not sustainable," concludes The New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert, and he's talking about the economy, not the environment. He continues:

Without an educated and empowered work force, without sustained investment in the infrastructure and technologies that foster long-term employment, and without a system of taxation that can actually pay for the services provided by government, the American dream as we know it will expire.

And without petroleum. Oil is shooting over $100 per barrel, caused ultimately by a looming decline in global supply, and exacerbated by rising demand in China and India, foolish policies such as the occupation of Iraq, and repressive regimes such as in Nigeria. And if we are serious about reducing carbon emissions to near zero in order to avert climate catastrophe, we must scale back our use of petroleum to near zero.

While we're learning to live without petroleum, we need to rebuild the workforce, infrastructure, technologies, and tax system, as Herbert suggests. I will argue in this post that we can accomplish all of these goals by replacing internal combustion engines with electric motors, using other energy sources for other petroleum uses, and perhaps most importantly, by changing the arrangement of the buildings, production, and people in our society in order to eliminate the need for so much petroleum.

In order to understand how to accomplish all of this, we need to know how petroleum is used, so let's look at some numbers!

Drive a stake into winter’s cold heart with a creamy, dreamy noodle dish

Goodbye winter, hello primavera. Photo: iStockphoto I love March. Why? Because I hate winter. I hate shoveling, I hate walking on ice, and I especially hate always having to look at the ground when I’m walking, instead of at all the people and things around me. With the exception of cross-country skiing and being able […]

Misleading cotton ads banned in U.K.

Poster and magazine ads by the U.S. cotton industry have been banned in Britain. The U.K. Advertising Standards Authority can put the kibosh on advertising deemed to be greenwashing, and regulators took issue with the cotton ads’ claim that the crop is “soft, sensual, and sustainable.” The ad authority pointed out that cotton is a […]

Projected CO2 emissions dwarf previous expectations

This recent paper on the likely path of China's CO2 emissions is striking in that the projections are much greater than once thought. They are so large that they dwarf any reductions by all other nations who have signed the Kyoto Protocol. On top of this is the fact that China doesn't have all that much non-fossil fuel energy potential and in fact is highly dependent on coal.

The questions that need to be asked are these:

1. Is it possible for China to actually decrease absolute emissions? If so, how, and how much will it cost? Who will pay for it?
2. If China can't reduce absolute emissions, how much more do all the rest of us need to decrease our emissions to offset China's increase? Is this feasible? Within what time frame? And again, how, and how much will it cost?

If we can't answer these questions, we really are in big trouble.