Talking point: Global warming and economic growth

Many people in positions of power -- and not just global warming skeptics -- believe the following two things:

1. Economic growth is an engine driven by fossil fuels. Remove all restrictions on fossil fuel use, growth surges. Restrict fossil fuel use, growth slows.
2. "Doing something about global warming" means restricting or capping carbon dioxide emissions, which means restricting fossil fuel use.

The inevitable conclusion is that the only way to fight global warming is to slow down and possibly cripple the economy. Thus you get calls for "certainty" about exactly how much damage global warming will do, so it can be weighed against the damage of mitigating global warming.

This picture of the situation is grossly distorted. Here's why, in a nutshell:

Saline solutions

Last October, in a Gristmill guest essay, Lloyd G. Carter described attempts by agribiz interests in California's powerful Westlands Water District to suck more subsidized water out of California's rivers.  Now the District is locked in another battle -- this one over toxic soil -- that could end up costing taxpayers $1 billion. Bill Walker, west coast VP of the Environmental Working Group, explains.

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In a repeat of a scheme that led to one of the worst wildlife disasters in the nation's history, federal water bureaucrats are on the brink of a decision that could kill thousands of migratory birds in California's San Joaquin Valley each year -- and will cost taxpayers $1 billion.

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Just plane frustrating

In a typical year, my family's biggest source of CO2 emissions is -- by quite a wide margin -- air travel. We use less gasoline than a typical American family, but we more than make up for it by traveling long distances to visit our family, scattered around the east and west coasts.

A few years back, I started strategizing about how to reduce our air travel. And I settled on a two-step plan.

• Step one: convince my sister to move from San Jose, CA to Seattle -- which would not only mean that we could see much more of each other, but also save our families at least 8 round trips per year (4 for her family, 4 for mine).
• Step two: give up traveling to see our east coast family for a year, and vacation close to home -- saving at least one cross-country round trip flight for our family of 4.

So this year, we put both steps into action. My sister and her family will be moving into our neighborhood (yay!) and we decided to go car camping rather than traveling to the east coast. We'll be flying a lot less as a result.

But as things have turned out, I'm not sure our plans have saved a single drop of fuel.

Picking the right horse

Michael G. Richard goes through the relevant chapter of Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers and pulls out a series of points and arguments that add up to this: carbon sequestration is unlikely to play a major role in our fight against global warming. (I basically agree -- see this post.) Give it a read.

I have just one quibble. Richard says:

As a society civilization species, we must back the right horse and stop being misled by the coal industry's delaying tactics. There's a big opportunity cost in time and resources to going down the wrong path.

I would question the notion that we need to "pick the right horse."

Lay media starting to get serious

I got a call this week from David Hyde, assistant producer of an excellent local public radio (KUOW) talk show called Weekday. He was doing research for a show (it ran last Thursday) titled "Biofuels: Hope or Hype?" I was able to call in for a quick question about how the pollution from biodiesel cars compare to gasoline cars (with all of their modern air-pollution controls). The gist was missed and the guest ended up comparing biodiesel to regular diesel instead, as usual. Oddly enough, nobody appears to have done the gasoline/biodiesel comparison yet ... except me. Maybe I planted a seed though.

It was an interesting show. Click here to hear it on RealAudio.

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Sinks a lot?

A quick vacation to Washington's Olympic Peninsula reminded me of two things. First -- dang, those trees are huge!

And second -- dang, there's a lot of clearcut coastal forestland that's still just basically sitting there: no trees, just scrub and piles of decaying stumps.

Which got me to thinking: How much CO2 could the clearcut land store if returned to its full rainforest glory? Enough to take a serious bite out of our climate-warming emissions?