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California and colorless green ideas
Paul Krugman, NY Times
THE factual debate about whether global warming is real is, or at least should be, over. The question now is what to do about it.
Aside from a few dead-enders on the political right, climate change skeptics seem to be making a seamless transition from denial to fatalism. In the past, they rejected the science. Now, with the scientific evidence pretty much irrefutable, they insist that it doesn’t matter because any serious attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions is politically and economically impossible.
Behind this claim lies the assumption, explicit or implicit, that any substantial cut in energy use would require a drastic change in the way we live. To be fair, some people in the conservation movement seem to share that assumption.
But the assumption is false. Let me tell you about a real-world counterexample: an advanced economy that has managed to combine rising living standards with a substantial decline in per capita energy consumption, and managed to keep total carbon dioxide emissions more or less flat for two decades, even as both its economy and its population grew rapidly. And it achieved all this without fundamentally changing a lifestyle centered on automobiles and single-family houses.
The name of the economy? California.
There’s nothing heroic about California’s energy policy – but that’s precisely the point. Over the years the state has adopted a series of conservation measures that are anything but splashy. They’re the kind of drab, colorless stuff that excites only real policy wonks. Yet the cumulative effect has been impressive, if still well short of what we really need to do.
(24 Feb 2007)
Congress to evaluate carbon taxes as part of warming solution
Darren Samuelsohn, E&E Daily
Add the following concept to the latest global warming effort getting increased attention on Capitol Hill: the carbon tax.
Politically controversial as they may be, proposals to create new taxes on fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions are getting a hard look, proponents say, because global warming is a massive problem in need of a real answer to stop the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.
And sure enough, with both Senate and House Democrats putting climate change atop their legislative agenda, taxes appear to be one of the many ideas under consideration. “Everything is on the table,” said Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, earlier this month in an interview.
Rangel will hold the first in a series of hearings on energy and climate change issues this Wednesday, even if he is not ready to back a specific approach.
“I don’t want any particular group crying out because you ask me and I say yes, and the headline says ‘Rangel favors carbon taxes,'” he said.
He then added: “It’s certainly an issue we will be looking at.”
The Senate Finance Committee also is likely to explore carbon taxes and other energy incentives when it holds a hearing of its own tomorrow on the subject.
…Schedule: The Senate Finance Committee hearing is at 10 a.m. tomorrow in 215 Dirksen. The House Ways and Means Committee hearing is at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 28, in 1100 Longworth.
Witnesses: In the Senate, Brian Schweitzer, Democratic governor of Montana; Michael Aimone, assistant deputy chief of staff for logistics, installations and mission support, U.S. Air Force; Dan Arvizu, director, National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Robert Socolow, co-director, Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton University; and Dan Reicher, director, energy and climate initiatives, Google Corp. Witnesses TBA for the House Ways and Means Committee.
(26 Feb 2007)
The first hint I’ve seen that carbon taxes may be taken seriously in the U.S.. Good article, unfortunately behind a paywall. E&E extensively covers the U.S. political/business aspects of environmental news. We’ve occasionally linked to their online videos, which are viewable to the public. -BA
5 Governors Agree to Work on Climate
Robert Tanner, Associated Press
Governors from five Western states agreed Monday to work together to reduce greenhouse gases, saying their region has suffered some of the worst of global warming with recent droughts and bad fire seasons.
The governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington state agreed that they would develop a regional target to lower greenhouse gases and create a program aimed at helping businesses reach the still-undecided goals.
“In the absence of meaningful federal action, it is up to the states to take action to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this country,” said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat. “Western states are being particularly hard-hit by the effects of climate change.”
(26 Feb 2007)
Global warming? Never heard of it, not my fault
Mark Morford, SF Chronicle
Behold this bizarre demographic. Behold this odd and shockingly large hunk of the American population, because chances are very good that at least some of them live right next door to you and breathe the same air and steal your parking spaces and often don’t shower for six days at a stretch.
…They are, in short, the deeply uninformed. The inexplicably ignorant. The wondrously numb, the disconnected, the way, way out of touch. And they are, apparently, legion.
…And they number, in fact, in the tens of millions, or fully 13 percent of the American population, if this recent, 46-nation poll is to be believed. Here is one way you shall know them: They have never heard of global warming.
You read that right. According to an ACNielsen poll, there are tens of millions of bipedal adult Internet-using Americans who have never seen a program about the most dire issue facing the planet today. They have not read about it in a newspaper or seen photos in a magazine or heard about it via an award-winning documentary or seen monkeylike Republican presidents deny its existence and spit on science and mock the simply insurmountable pile of evidence in the name of oil profits and flagrant cronyism.
… fully 95 percent of Latin America has heard of global warming, and 75 percent think it’s a “very serious” issue. Not when the United States ranks dead last among all 46 nations in its concern for the issue of dire climate change.
…Here is what we do know: The United States is, by far, the world’s worst contributor to the root causes of global warming, and yet we are the least concerned about it. Read that again: Despite how the United States pumps more pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than China or India or Russia, a scant 42 percent of us see the problem as “very serious.” Even China and India, those irresponsible mega-polluters of the developing world we like to scoff at for their flagrant industrial waste, are far more concerned and more universally informed.
(23 Feb 2007)
Review of Monbiot’s “Heat”
Moshe Braner, Vermont Peak Oil Network
Some thoughts about the book “Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning” by George Monbiot
Monbiot set out in this book to achieve a narrowly defined, but still difficult, goal. Since, as he says, “nobody ever rioted for austerity”, he looked for a way to cut the greenhouse gas emissions of the UK by 90% without crashing the economy nor letting go of essential comforts and freedoms. Given Monbiot’s talent in making everybody unhappy, it was interesting to see what he comes up with in an attempt, in a sense, to keep everybody as happy as possible.
My comments are in three parts. Part 1 is on whether he has reached his self-prescribed goal, Part 2 comments on applicability outside the UK, especially in the USA and specifically in Vermont, and Part 3 discusses his goal itself and its wider context.
(31 Jan 2007)
