Climate Climate & Energy

Book shows we can meet hard targets in stopping climate change

As the climate crisis grows worse, many people question whether we can phase out human greenhouse-gas emissions before an irreversible feedback cycle begins. As a belated New Year's present for 2008, I want to offer for free the full text of my book Cooling It! No Hair Shirt Solutions to Global Warming, to increase optimism.

We not only have the technical capability to phase out fossil fuels over the course of 30 years, we can eliminate 94 percent of emissions within 20. The cost is close to zero: between savings from efficiency and renewable sources that are more expensive than fossil fuels (but not that much more expensive), the market cost will balance out to around what we pay now. That is before we gain benefits from less pollution and less climate chaos.

A lot of people worry (and rightfully so) not about the technical solutions, but about the politics of implementing them. They are right to do so; but the fact that we are missing huge opportunities for efficiency gains -- even at current prices -- shows that there is a political opportunity as well as a political danger. Let the people of the U.S. and the world understand the great opportunities green technology offers for better living and real wealth creation for the vast majority.

The old story that the Chinese character for "crisis" is composed of the characters for "danger" and "opportunity" is false -- but the metaphor is too good to drop.

You can download the entire book as a single file (or chapter by chapter) here.

Funds for offsets shouldn’t reward past environmental behavior

If you must buy carbon offsets, caveat emptor -- in particular, don't buy them from the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). That is the point of a terrific front-page article in the Washington Post: "Value of U.S. House's Carbon Offsets Is Murky, Some Question Effectiveness of $89,000 Purchase to Balance Out Greenhouse Gas Emissions."

Yes, it is nice to be quoted above the fold in any major newspaper -- the quote in the headline is from me -- but the reason I think the article is important is that the reporter took the time to track down the offset projects the taxpayer money went to. The results are not encouraging. I am not a fan of offsets -- and certainly wasn't a fan of the House buying offsets from the CCX in the first place.

But I was surprised by the overall lameness of the specific projects and utterly shocked to read the words of CCX CEO Richard Sandor (a man I have a fair amount of respect for):

Let cows eat vaccines along with distillers grains

In December, a study came out suggesting a link between distillers grains — a waste product of the corn-ethanol process — and a spike in cases of beef tainted with the deadly E. coli 0157 virus. You see, the government-mandated ethanol boom has dramatically pushed up corn prices. To cut costs, feedlot operators have been […]

The health externalities of coal

A while back I commented on a post over at Common Tragedies, an excellent environmental economics blog of recent vintage. As is my inimitable style, my comments were hastily written and full of wild generalizations. One had to do with the health externalities of coal burning, which I alleged were extensive. Recently, an email to […]

Mike Tidwell speaks out in the WaPo against coal

Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, regularly has me on his Earthbeat radio show, so I'm returning the favor with this great letter to the editor he had in the Washington Post yesterday:

Fact: Virginia gets less than 1 percent of its electricity from "green" sources such as the wind or the sun. Fact: Virginia ranks 38th among U.S. states in energy efficiency. Fact: Climate change is real, and fossil fuel substitutes are needed, according to President Bush's State of the Union address last year. So how would Dominion Virginia Power respond to these facts?

• Savagely blow up entire mountains in southwest Virginia.
• Feed the resulting exposed coal to a proposed power plant that is unnecessary and would cost ratepayers at least $1.8 billion.
• Create lots more greenhouse gases in the process.
• Doom the good people of southwest Virginia to living with a brutal extraction industry that has no future.

Whew! Talk about getting everything wrong.

And yet Gov. Tim Kaine supports the plan:

Here’s your chance to be the Pollan of climate change

Kristina/Jason’s plea for a tagline here reminds me: check out this post over on the NRDC Switchboard blog. It notes the success of Michael Pollan’s already legendary aphorism — "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." — and wonders whether something similarly compact could be used to explain what people need to know about climate […]

Climate change is as much a social priority as an environmental concern

Climate change is a universal menace, threatening hardships for everyone. But it's not an egalitarian menace: everyone will not suffer equally. Perversely, those people and nations least to blame for causing it are most vulnerable to its impacts.

Climate disruption heaps misfortune on the less fortunate, whether in low-lying Bangladesh, the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, or the flood plains around Chehalis, Wash. In the aftermath of climate change, the less you have, the more you're likely to lose.

NYT endorses Clinton and McCain, notes McCain’s climate advocacy

The New York Times has endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain for their respective parties, noting that McCain “was an early advocate for battling global warming.”

Severe drought in the Southeast impacts nuclear power production

A cautionary tale for all those who think nuclear is the answer to climate change. The Washington Post reported yesterday that drought conditions are affecting nuclear production capacity.

[Plants] could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate.

But wait, there's more ...

AGU releases position statement on climate change

The American Geophysical Union, a scientific organization with over 50,000 members, mostly earth scientists, just released a position statement on climate change.

It is a strong endorsement of the mainstream view of climate science, as articulated by the IPCC reports: the Earth is warming, humans are to blame for most of the recent warming, and future warming may be disastrous.

While this is a strong statement by itself, its true strength comes when you consider that this statement is just one of a spate of similar statements by other expert organizations: the American Meteorological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (PDF), as well as several others. Even the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, while not exactly embracing the connection between carbon dioxide and climate, cannot bring themselves to contradict it.

Then, of course, we have the "Inhofe 400." Whom should we believe? Jim Inhofe or virtually all of the world's experts? That's a tough one ...