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Save the Earth, buy less
Jared Blumenfeld, San Francisco Chronicle
…China’s growth, however, is powered by America’s demand for consumer products — and this growth is fueled by coal. These two factors lie at the heart of the political impasse. China and the United States each worry that if they agree to binding greenhouse-gas reduction targets, their respective house of economic cards will collapse. This unhealthy symbiotic relationship needs to be unraveled if any global post-Kyoto global warming agreement is to be reached.
The high rate of consumer spending over the past several years is credited with keeping the U.S. economy afloat, but it didn’t come without consequences. The products we buy have an enormous impact on the climate, and represent the hidden cost of our consumer lifestyle. Each TV, cell phone, kitchen appliance — in fact every consumer item we buy from China (or elsewhere) — creates greenhouse-gas emissions to produce and transport.
Americans have become deeply addicted to consuming. If it’s cool, if it’s trendy, if it’s shiny and new, we buy it. As a consequence, we are running up ever-higher levels of debt in order to have a lifestyle beyond our financial means and beyond the ability of the Earth to sustain it. Americans spent $42 billion more than they earned last year, turning the annual U.S. savings ratio negative for the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
If the United States imports less, China’s gross domestic product growth will slow. This would accomplish Beijing’s goal of cooling down the overheated Chinese economy, and the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank’s desire to put U.S. savings in the black. Reducing economic reliance on China’s production and our consumption, however, can only be achieved by buying less.
In America, consumer spending drives a full 70 percent of our economy. This is significantly higher than any Western European country. Norway, consistently ranked by the United Nations as the best country in which to live, spends only 43 percent of its GDP on stuff. So buying less can bring rewards by helping get us out of debt, removing the need for more self-storage units and reducing our impact on the planet.
China, for its part, needs to meet us halfway by using available technologies to manufacture products more efficiently (i.e., expending less energy per dollar of product) and to move its national energy mix away from coal-fired generation.
Jared Blumenfeld is the director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment.
(16 July 2007)
United States Carbon Footprint Map
eredux
Contributor Fred Jackson writes:
Check out this US Carbon Footprint Map, an interactive United States Carbon Footprint Map, illustrating Greenest States. This site has all sorts of stats on individual State energy consumptions, demographics and State energy offices, State Taxes and more…
(1 July 2007)
Pew’s Claussen compares cap-and-trade and carbon tax approaches for emissions reduction (Video and transcript)
E&E TV
With the Senate already having voted on an energy bill and the House expected to take up energy legislation this month, the next course of action expected after the August recess will be a debate on emissions reduction legislation.
Will Congress favor a cap-and-trade approach or a carbon tax? Are there enough votes in the House and Senate to pass a climate bill?
During today’s OnPoint, Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, discusses Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.) recently introduced climate bill.
She explains why she believes the safety valve option is not the best approach and compares cap-and-trade to a carbon tax.
(16 July 2007)
Climate Change Debate Hinges On Economics
Lawmakers Doubt Voters Would Fund Big Carbon Cuts
Steven Mufson, Washington Post
Here’s the good news about climate change: Energy and climate experts say the world already possesses the technological know-how for trimming greenhouse gas emissions enough to slow the perilous rise in the Earth’s temperatures.
Here’s the bad news: Because of the enormous cost of addressing global warming, the energy legislation considered by Congress so far will make barely a dent in the problem, while farther-reaching climate proposals stand a remote chance of passage.
Despite growing public concern over global warming, the House has failed to agree on new standards for automobile fuel efficiency, and the Senate has done little to boost the efficiency of commercial office buildings and appliances. In September, Congress is expected to start wrestling with more ambitious legislation aimed at slowing climate change; but because of the complexity of the likely proposals, few expect any bill to become law. Even if passed by Congress and signed by President Bush, the final measure may not be tough enough to slow global warming.
“I don’t think there’s any question that what is being talked about now would, over the long term, be insufficient,” said Philip Sharp, president of the think tank Resources for the Future and a former House member. “The issue is: Will Congress get in place a larger architecture that sends a signal to the economy that accelerates change?”
(15 July 2007)
More from the Post on climate:
What It Would Take to Put the Brakes on Global Warming
Yes, the Water’s Warm . . . Too Warm
