What Democrats Won't Tell You About Climate Change
Has there ever been a more timely natural catastrophe than climate change? I mean, here we all are worrying about the future of the American economy—too much debt, jobs and industries moving overseas, new competitors in Asia and India—when what merrily comes along is a perceived civilizational challenge whose solution will not only create a better environment but also—talk about luck!—millions of those high-paying "green-collar" jobs and innovative new industries of the future that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been talking about. As Clinton said in one presidential debate, "This issue of energy and global warming has the promise of creating millions of new jobs in America. It can be a win-win, if we do it right."
Heck, if climate change was a sham, it almost seems that it would be worthwhile to fabricate it, given all the apparent economic benefits. Then again, maybe not. Here is what William Pizer, an economist at Resources for the Future and a lead author on the most recent report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said at a symposium earlier this week here in Washington: "As an economist, I am skeptical that [dealing with climate change] is going to make money. You'll have new industries, but they'll be doing what old industries did but a higher net cost.... You'll be depleting other industries."
Of course, many economists will recognize "the green is good for growth" trap that Obama and Clinton have stumbled into. It's just a modern iteration of the famous "broken windows fallacy" where people mistake the shifting of wealth and resources for the creation of new wealth and resources.
Pizer went on to say that calls for dramatic reductions in carbon emissions—the Democrats want 80 percent, John McCain 65 percent—were also unrealistic unless there was"some event"that really galvanized public opinion. Instead, what he predicted was a modest price on carbon via a cap-and-trade plan, a greater push for efficiency, and more regulation of energy-intensive industries.
And it wasn't just Pizer who seemed skeptical that America was ready to undertake a massive commitment to stop perceived climate change. Another participant was Nikki Roy of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change who worried that none of the presidential candidates was campaigning hard on the climate issue and that, if they didn't, nothing major would get done on the issue during the next four years. And Robert McNally, an energy analyst for the Tudor Investment hedge fund, said he didn't think climate change, by itself, was a big enough issue to spur a radical change in American energy or economic policy that it needed to be turned into a national security issue.
It's easy to understand such skepticism when you fully grasp how hard it would be to dramatically cut U.S. carbon emissions without radical technological innovation or extreme impoverishment. Here is how analyst Stephen Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute put it in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece: Reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent (from 1990 levels) by 2050, as the Democrats want to do, would cut U.S. annual emissions from 6 billion metric tons a year, or 20 tons per person, to 1 billion metric tons—about what we emitted in 1910 when America had 92 million people and an economy a fraction of the size of the current one. When you consider that the U.S. population will be over 400 million by 2050 with a much larger economy, per capita emissions would have to fall to 2.5 tons, or about what you would find in today's Haiti and Somalia.
Other fun facts from Hayward:
Average household emissions will have to fall to no more than 1.5 tons per year. In our current electricity infrastructure, this would mean using no more than about 2,500 KwH per year. This is not enough juice to run the average hot water heater.... ...Right now our cars and trucks consume about 180 billion gallons of motor fuel. To meet the 2050 target, we shall have to limit consumption of gasoline to about 31 billion gallons, unless a genuine carbon-neutral liquid fuel can be produced. If the entire nation drove nothing but Toyota Priuses in 2050, we'd still overshoot the transportation emissions target by 40%
No free lunch, folks. Economist Nicholas Stern, in a report for the British government, has concluded that we should spend 1 percent of the global economy every year to avoid the worse effects of climate change. Now even if you take Stern's numbers as correct—and many think he overestimates the economic risks of doing nothing—he still advocates spending $700 billion a year on a supposed problem. Or to put it another way, if dealing with climate change slows the global economy as much as Stern thinks it will, the size of the global economy would be $243 trillion by 2100 . But if the global economy keep grow ing at a pace more like the one we have seen recently, we would have a $550 trillion global economy in the year 2100, more than twice the size of the economy assumed in the first scenario.
Tags: Democrats | environment | global warming
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Warming Facts
To cripple our economy on the assumption that global warming is caused by mankind is mindless logic.
In this logic, which Mr. Gore promotes by the use of lies and distortions in his movie, we can not commit to the limitations proposed until there is more agreement and fact in on the cause of global warming.
By the way there has not been additional warming in ten years and the earth's history shows that the earth goes through warming and cooling phases.
Al Gore is building a good life for himself in the sale of manmade global warming as are many others and we have think instead of allowing ourselves to be led like sheep
I believe we can achieve big things...
...but to think that us insignificant human beings can change the climate of a planet that has been around for more than a billion years is not only an egregious display of hubris, but a sorry display of arrogance.
wow
the end of your article didn't make sense to me. if we act we'll have economy A, if we don't we'll have economy B. First of all, when you say economy are you talking about GDP?
Do you really believe the best course of action is to continue w/ business as usual? Although, if we go about things the way you suggest, we'll be out of oil before 2100 and I'm guessing that throws your final figures off.
So what's more desirable, a future w/ rationed oil so we can still make plastics or one in which we burn it all in our cars and we lose plastics forever? Look around and marvel at how many synthetic carbon based materials are in your home, office and car. We could give all that up forever if we just do nothing, sounds like a good idea to me... NOT
timely
Climate change was first posited over 30 years ago, they must have thought it up just to influence this election. Talk about foresight!
rate of climate change
Simply looking at climate change from the past and noting that the earth goes through periodic warming and cooling phases is not a sufficient argument for not doing something about the change that is occurring now. It is important to understand that the rate at which our climate is changing now is significantly faster than the earth has ever experienced in its entire history.
Humans are not insignificant; in fact, the human species has a greater ability to change and manipulate the environment of the earth more than any other organism on the planet. Humans are polluting the world's oceans, lakes and rivers with nitrogen loaded compounds (fertilizers), creating dead zones in regions like the Gulf of Mexico; we are polluting the earth's atmosphere by burning fossil fuels (the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is the highest it has been in millions of years); we are over fishing the oceans and destroying forests around the world to name a few changes that we have made to the earth. To suggest that these activities do not influence to earths environment or climate is ignorant and arrogant.
Keep asking
We don't know whether coastal cities are going to flood or not. Or when it might happen. Or how many. Or how deeply. Or what will have caused it---if it happens.
We don't know whether the current food shortage is going to get better or worse due to weather and what grows where--and how well. But these are certainly questions that should not be dismissed by 6 billion people who have supposed "intelligence".
Basic Math
CO2: 380 ppm (as measured near active volcano, will use number anyway to make point), effect measured by experiments meant to show it as a green house gas: no more than 5 degrees difference between CO2 and normal air at same volume (even at induced temperatures of 50c) so 380 parts per million times 5 degrees difference = 0.0019 degrees maximum difference in air temp attributable all CO2 (man made or otherwise).
If CO2 levels somehow jumped to 760 ppm (100% increase - not likely any time soon), that would give us 0.0038 degrees max.
Not exactly earth ending stuff. :-)
If global warming over the past 100 years is, what, 1 degree or so, then I am wondering why the Global Warming activists are not focused on the other .9981 degrees of it.
Haywood / CEI fooling you
Steven Haywood is disingenuous to suggest, and you are foolish to repeat, that reducing emissions "in our current electricity infrastructure" means reducing household consumption to the juice of a hot water heater. One of the main ways we're going to reduce emissions - one of the cheapest, near-term solutions - is to change our electricity generation to low-carbon sources (natural gas, wind, nuclear, even coal with carbon storage).
So you can run just about everything in your house about the way you do today (those appliances will also use the juice alot more efficiently, but you'll still have the same hot water and fridge and tv and stereo).
You'll also have a similar car - it's just you're car will be a biofuels-burning plug-in hybrid or something.
Don't let the professional smoke-screeners for big business scare you...
Climate Change
In the end, whatever one makes of the exact contours of the climate chaneg challenge or the precise antropgenic contribution, there can be no doubt that most of the human activities that are the focus of GHG mitigation are activities which we ought to reduce, substallially redesign or eliminate, ewither becaue they are harming us now, or will harm us in the foreseeable future.
The International Energy Agency says that 'peak oil' will be upon us by 2013. They might or might not be right, but that day will come at some point in the not too distant future. Well before we get anywhere near the point when RARs of crude oil are confined to difficult to get at low quality high cost to recover oil, the traders will start sharpoly escalating the price. Any society that is still dependent on crude then will be in a lot of economic trouble. And if then is less than 25 years away, as it surely is, any community that is arguing about how much man is contributing to global warming instead of decarbonising is simply inviting economic ruin. It's worth recalling that the price shock inflation of 1973 was caused by a dip in production of just 5%. So do we really need to dot the i's and cross the t's to go ahead? Of course not.
Is there a good reason for preventing deforestation without believing in global warming? Of course. What about acid rain or increasingly acid seas? Heck yes. What about cleaing up particulates and toxic aerosols? Yes again. Coal plant emissions and coal mining in general? Yes. Reducing waste? Of course.
Imagine, 25 years from now, having decided that we need to get moving, we'd made it our business to meet ambitious GHG reduction targets. Cities were now much more densely populated, and relatively cheap, clean, efficient public transport was so widely available that most people didn't think it worth having a car, and simply rented one when they needed it. Virtually all the cars were zero emissions. Road accidents were major news, because they were so rare. Nearly everybody could get to work within 40 minutes and most of them within 30. The air was clean. The US was no longer buying oil from the middle east and in fact was using 10% of what it does now. Power, though more expensive per unit was cheaper because residences and businesses were far more efficient. A combination of nuclear, solar, wind, wave, tidal, geothermal, hydro, OTEC and biomass supplied almost all the world's energy needs. The third world, freed from the burden of buying masses of crude, is now not much less wealthy than we are and can trade with us on something like fair terms.
In the midst of all this we discover that our fears about global warming were somewhat exaggerated and that we only got modest climate mitigation benefits out of the programs. Would there be room for buyers' remorse? I think not.
Fran
So Fran...
Are you saying that even though "Climate change" may be a scam, we still will benefit from the fruits of the panic? Whjy not let reality dictate whether those measures and technologies are necessary, and not some cooked-up crisis?
Haywood not fooling you
in response to the person contesting Haywood's assertion that we'll have to reduce our consumption - he is right considering on an oil based source. However, one also has to understand the underlying economics here. Virtually every other source of alternative fuels cost more to produce than oil. Wind power cost 6x more than oil to produce energy. Hydrogen, the 'panacea' everyone is waiting for, costs more in energy to produce than you get out of it! Biofuel production costs more than oil, results in less energy per unit and has the added disadvantage of bringing up food prices. Indeed, there are reports of parts of the Amazon being torn down in order to grow biofuel crops. We're already thinking that fuel prices going up currently is a crisis. Wait until the alternative / biofuel fuel bill comes due. This is not to say that we shouldn't look towards the future but to make decisions based on emotion rather than firm science makes no sense. As someone aptly pointed out in another post, the temperature of the earth has actually gone down in the last 10 years, and we are in the beginning stages of a global cooling period. If you think that global warming will give us problems with food supply wait till the cooling starts...
How can people be so stupid
The sun and its effect on the oceans is what drives the climate. CO2 as a climate driver is a sick joke. How can so many of you be so stupid to believe this.
You are all like a bunch of little kids having a sleep over and wanting to stay up at night telling scary stories.
There is not one shred of actual empirical evidence to support the theory of enhanced greenhouse warming. It can't happen, and it isn't happening.
When you look beneath the surface of most of the people pushing this nonsense you see that they are much more interested in political outcomes than this baloney that will have absolutely no impact on the climate.
Get a life and leave us alone.
Thoughts on Sam
Sam,
You are clearly the one who is so stupid. The earth's warming and cooling cycles that the author claims this recent trend is a part of have all been caused by the carbon cycle. Go back to seventh grade science class if you don't remember the process. Essentially, the more carbon that is released into the air (by natural means or otherwise), the more of the sun's heat we trap in the atmosphere. This causes more ice to melt and the seas to desalinate, both of which escalate the warming period.
You can not argue that we are not adding to the carbon cycle, because it's obvious that our use of fossil fuels emits carbon dioxide. These fuels would not have emitted that carbon on their own in such a fast period of time (the last100 years). Also, scientists have proven that we are escalating the carbon cycle, therefore warming the earth.
Regardless of whether or not you believe in climate change, going green will put us in a position as a nation to do better when we run out of oil. You can not possibly believe that it is a limitless resource, because it isn't. Unless you just invented an oil-making machine that uses no energy, we need to make a change.
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NO Vision
You've gotta believe in our ability to achieve big things.
May 02, 2008 15:42:12 PM [permalink] [report comment]