Articles by Charles Komanoff

Lessons on getting the numbers straight

What's a percent or two? Or three? Not much, sometimes. But a lot when we're talking about carbon dioxide emissions that are throwing earth's climate out of whack. And quite a lot when effort is going into ranking emission sources to help prioritize our responses to the climate crisis.

These thoughts are occasioned by a scoop in the Guardian (U.K.) reporting that world shipping -- essentially, freighters and tankers moving goods and raw materials -- accounts for "up to 5% of the global total" of carbon emissions. "CO2 output from shipping [is] twice as much as airlines," shouts the Guardian headline, in light of the 2-3 percent share of emissions associated with air travel.

Goodness, a dozen eco-blogs seemed to mutter in unison, have we been barking up the wrong tree? Were we wrong to hammer globe-girdling celebs and fret over cheap air fares, instead of targeting ships carrying shirts from Bangkok to Berlin and plasma screens from Seoul to San Francisco?

Well, not so fast.

Can a carbon tax neutralize new carbon emitters?

At the Carbon Tax Center, we're forever on the lookout for new and outsized ways in which Americans are using energy. Too often, today's novelty item is just a clever marketing campaign away from tomorrow's sizable carbon emitter. Witness high-definition televisions, or Jet Skis.

If history is a guide, efficiency standards to govern new devices' fuel consumption won't be promulgated until after they have proliferated -- if ever. Carbon taxes, in contrast, could help rein in new products' energy requirements from the get-go, i.e., in the design stage. Where a product has little redeeming social value, the price signals from a carbon tax might even keep it from gaining a toehold in the culture.

These thoughts came to mind when we read an article in The New York Times (sub. rq.) last week about suburbia's latest must-have energy-guzzlers: home snowmaking machines.

Why carbon taxes trump cap-and-trade

Yesterday Gristmill ran a curious article by Bill Chameides of Environmental Defense, attacking a carbon tax strawman that no one is advocating, least of all the Carbon Tax Center (CTC).

Chameides stated that the "government would use additional tax dollars to subsidize the development of selected low-carbon technologies." We invite him to look at CTC's proposed carbon tax, which is revenue-neutral. Revenues will go to reduce regressive taxes or to finance progressive, equal rebates to all U.S. residents. Contrary to Chameides' charge, we have never advocated targeting tax revenues to any technology, privileged or otherwise. Nor, to our knowledge, have the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum, whom he also took to task, or the dozens of columnists, economists, scientists, and other public figures who support taxing carbon.

Game over? Hardly.

With the new IPCC report finally out in the world, climate activists can again focus on action. What do we do now?

I say, first let's cut through the defeatism that's posing as realism, as in this article in yesterday's L.A. Times, "Game over on global warming?":

Everybody in the United States could switch from cars to bicycles.

The Chinese could close all their factories.

Europe could give up electricity and return to the age of the lantern.

But all those steps together would not come close to stopping global warming.

Really? I ran the numbers and came up with a 17-18% reduction in global CO2 emissions (4.3% from zapping U.S. cars, 7.7% for closing Chinese factories, 5.6% for converting European electricity to wind).

Hasn't the Times heard of harm reduction? Every percentage drop in emissions will translate into some mitigation in sea level rises, violent storms, and other harms from global warming.

No less vexing, for this writer, was Robert Reich's blog reaction to the IPCC report. The former Clinton Secretary of Labor hadn't even finished his lead paragraph when he threw in the towel: "You can forget a carbon tax any time soon."

C'mon, Bob. Don't mourn, organize. Surrendering just when a political critical mass is assembling to attack carbon emissions is, well, un-American. A carbon tax is essential, and the work of coaxing the public and pressuring policymakers has to start now. There's just no alternative.