Can Far-Reaching Pollution Targets Be Achieved? Point 2
(Let's stop chasing unrealistic emissions cuts and look at "Plan B") (1233)
This is the third of six exchanges in a series of e-mail debates between two climate-change specialists. Commenting is Steve Hayward, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research .
Summary: Businesses that support specific legislation usually profit from the regulations that may follow, Hayward says. Also, it will take more than the $5 trillion invested in fossil fuels to produce the same amount of energy from alternative sources. Many consider the technical deployment required to meet specified emissions targets nearly impossible to achieve, regardless of cost. Measures like cap and trade will not solve the problem. Instead of failing to achieve improbable goals, Hayward suggests using alternative methods, such as geo-engineering, to counteract the effects of carbon dioxide emissions. - Editors
Dear Gernot,
Reading your comments reminds me of T.S. Eliot's line in The Hollow Men, "Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow." There is a very large shadow indeed between the ideal of a low-carbon (how low, by the way?) global energy system and the economic and indeed physical realities of making it come into being.
I have to say I am more than a bit surprised to hear essentially a paraphrase of the infamous and much-derided slogan from the Eisenhower years that "what's good for General Electric (GE) is good for America." I think there have been at least two Nobel Prizes in economics awarded (James Buchanan and George Stigler that I can think of) for insights into corporate rent-seeking.* In a nutshell, it is always a bad sign that corporations find their greatest profit opportunity in getting Washington to change the rules rather than responding to the marketplace as it is. Count me out in your enthusiasm for all the corporations lining up to support cap-and-trade [legislation] in Washington, except to note that when asked this spring in hearings whether they still would support cap and trade if the emissions permits were auctioned instead of given away for free to them, they all said no.
I'll add in passing, since you mentioned both leakage and CEO [chief executive officer] fiduciary duty, that firms like GE are already importing a large amount of the raw materials and finished components for windmills and other alternative energy. (GE is importing all its compact fluorescent light bulbs to replace the incandescent bulb factory it shut down here in the U.S. - a triumph for green jobs, yes, in China.)
LOW-CARBON SOURCES COST MORE
Here's my problem with your arithmetic: It takes a lot more than the $5 trillion spent on fossil-fuel energy each year to get the same amount of energy from alternative sources. The International Energy Agency's conservative estimate is that it costs at least $1 trillion a year more, and this is likely a huge underestimate. But the real challenge is not to nudge the carbon meter a little, but to show a serious pathway to the 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the year 2050. Again, I refer to the summary assessment of the International Energy Agency: "Even leaving aside any debate about the political feasibility ... it is uncertain whether the scale of the transformation envisaged is even technically achievable, as the scenario assumes broad deployment of technologies that have not yet been proven. The technology shift, if achievable, would certainly be unprecedented in scale and speed of deployment.
We should attach some numbers to the recent Chinese pledge to lower their emissions intensity up to 45 percent over the next two decades and to the U.S. commitment to a 17 percent reduction by 2020. Sound impressive? In round numbers, this means U.S. CO2 emissions will fall by a bit more than 1 billion tons a year, while Chinese CO2 emissions will rise by about 1.5 billion tons. Or, to use the familiar example about China, it means that instead of starting up one new coal-fired power plant every week, they will start up a new coal-fired power plant every week and a half.
For the U.S. and China to achieve the goal of an 80 percent reduction in (GHG) emissions by 2050, the U.S. would have to reduce per capita GHG emissions to a level last experienced around the year 1875; China to a rate less than half that of today's Haiti and Somalia (the lowest emitting nations I can find because of their desperate poverty).
I invite you to dispute my calculations; usually the climate campaigners dispute every contrary claim of skeptics like me, but no one has challenged my analysis of the 80 percent GHG reduction target. I haven't seen a single serious analysis yet of the sources and costs for replacing fossil fuels on this scale in this short a time. Science magazine published a long article by several leading scientists a few years ago suggesting it couldn't be done at all , while a separate article in Science thought it possible for the U.S. to keep emissions flat through the year 2030 at a cost of about$6 trillion . Not exactly chump change.
This is why I find myself oddly aligned with James Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Greenpeace against Environmental Defense and other climate campaigners in thinking both the cap-and-trade legislation and the Kyoto-Copenhagen process are a prolonged and solemn farce (to borrow Winston Churchill's famous phrase about disarmament talks of the 1930s). I like to say that the Kyoto process is the most fantastical since the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1921 promised to outlaw war forever.
AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE ALTERNATIVES
I part company with Hansen, Greenpeace, and other more realistic climate campaigners over how best to combat global warming. As I suggest above, achieving fossil fuel reductions of the scale and pace I describe above is, from a practical perspective, impossible. It also is politically impossible: How will nations agree on the right global average temperature? What happens when Canada and Russia have different opinions than Latin America and Africa?
The need for a "Plan B" soon will become apparent. I advocate large-scale projects designed to counteract the consequences of carbon emissions. These are often referred to as "geo-engineering," or "solar radiation management" (SRM). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Kyoto-Copenhagen process must consider the scientific, political, legal, and economic issues of "geo-engineeering." Already the Royal Academy of Sciences in Britain, and the National Academy of Sciences and NASA in the U.S. are studying the issue seriously. The IPCC has, until now, mostly ignored or dismissed the subject, but exploring addressing geo-engineering is rapidly becoming an imperative.
I look forward to your reply, Gernot.
Best regards,
Steve
No comments:
Post a Comment