Articles by Joseph Romm
Joseph Romm is the editor of Climate Progress and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
All Articles
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Dumb arguments rear their heads yet again
A reader pointed me to a letter in the South China Morning Post, "Cold water on the warming debate" (subs. req'd). The writer, a senior research fellow of the HK Institute of Economics and Business, rehashes a number of mistaken arguments I hear all too often:
Many people fail to knit together these two strands - climate change and the exhaustion of fossil fuels. If they did, they would see that the energy crisis, which is predicted as a result of the exhaustion of fossil fuel reserves, contains the seeds of the resolution of the global warming crisis. As fossil fuels become scarcer, their price is sure to rise. We see this already. Under market forces, this will accelerate substitution, largely towards nuclear energy. This will, in turn, redress the climatic concerns.
No. Conventional oil may be peaking, but the world has plenty of affordable coal, far more than is needed to destroy the climate (which is Hansen's point). The climate problem is not self-resolving. Indeed, peak oil may drive us to liquid coal, a climate disaster. The article continues:
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Borrowing and banking carbon — the new black
So you want to have greenhouse gas standards with teeth, but you want to minimize the risk they take too big a bite from the economy. And, of course, like me, you don't like the safety valve idea. What do you do? Banking and borrowing, of course.
With "banking," the right to emit carbon can be saved for future use. With "borrowing," current emissions are extended against future abatement.
What is fascinating is that today a detailed banking and borrowing proposal, "Cost-Containment for the Carbon Market," was put forward by four moderate senators -- Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and John Warner (R-Va.) -- with the help of Duke University's environmental program.
A Greenwire piece (sub. req) notes "a top environmental group also didn't shy away from the latest idea":
"This is an interesting proposal to help address cost concerns while maintaining the integrity of the emissions cap," said David Doniger, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Borrowing and repayment is far preferable to the safety valve, which breaks the cap by allowing firms to increase emissions with no payback requirement.
I agree. Kudos to the Senators for moving the debate forward. Here are more excerpts from the piece:
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How coal CO2 is different from oil CO2
Our top climate scientist has sent out a really, really long email (where does he find the time?), mostly discussing comments on his recent essay on coal. I think Hansen is the clearest thinker on climate among the top scientists in the field, so I will reprint the email, breaking it up into several postings. The first one addresses "Coal-CO2 versus Oil-CO2":
