I’d like to propose a few new rules our political leaders might keep in mind as they figure out what their role should be in addressing global climate change.
- The first rule in treating the patient is to do no harm. As discussed previously, we must stop building conventional coal plants, inefficient buildings, gas-guzzling vehicles and other carbon-intensive projects that lock us in to heavy greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come.
- Politics may be the art of compromise, but the atmosphere isn’t negotiating. We don’t have much wiggle room to stabilize the climate. Public policy must be based on hard science not back-room deals. If politicians are afraid of lobbyists, deniers, and swift-boaters, they must take refuge in what the vast majority of climate scientists are telling us. No one said leadership would be easy. Better yet, we voters can reward good policy and make sound science sound politics.
- We need problem-solving, not problem-switching. Liquid fuels from coal help the oil import problem, but are lousy for the climate. Nuclear power is a lot cleaner than coal power, but leaves us with wastes, great new targets for terrorism, and the possibility that nuclear materials will fall into the wrong hands. All energy technologies have some drawbacks. But before we start trading one serious set of problems for others, let’s exhaust the potential of the relatively problem-free choices such as efficiency and many renewables.
- There is no silver bullet. The danger is that Congress will pass a weak carbon policy and consider the job done. It’s not that easy. Climate change is a large-scale problem that requires a portfolio of creative and comprehensive solutions — national, regional, and local. Neither a carbon tax nor cap-and-trade system is sufficient by itself.
- Pick solutions that multi-task. Climate change isn’t the only problem on our plate. There are the related problems of peak oil, the fact that our gas dollars fund terrorism, the need for greater homeland security, rising health care costs. Let’s focus on the solutions that solve several problems at once — for example, alternative transportation fuels that reduce oil imports, slow our transfer of wealth to the Persian Gulf, require fewer refineries that can be shut down by terrorists and natural disasters, and prevent tailpipe emissions that aren’t good for our health.
- Nature has limits. Deal with it. The feeling of limitless resources, limitless space, and limitless freedom is part of the American DNA. But when Nature pushes back hard, as it is doing now, we have found its limits. When a child burns her hand on a hot stove, she discovers a truth. That’s where we are now.
- If we insist on ruining the planet, we must stop calling ourselves the most intelligent species. I don’t mean to be a tree-hugger here, but when the world’s leading scientists forecast that anthropogenic climate change may wipe out a third of the world’s species, including many beneficial to us, we’ve discovered who is upsetting the natural order. It’s us.
- The essence of stewardship is this: The greatest generation is yet to be born, if we give it the chance. It’s way too late to pass the torch. From time to time, I’ve heard leaders say our children will have to solve the climate problem. But we aging baby-boomers are the current leaders of society’s change agents — government agencies, nonprofit organizations, corporations, universities, churches, and the like. Greenhouse gas emissions must be slowed, stopped and reversed starting now – or else it will be too late for our children to stop catastrophic climate change. It’s up to us to leave our children a manageable problem — not an irreversible one. Shame on us if we don’t.
If you have suggestions for more new rules, please post them.
– Bill B.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
RE: Silver bullets
As I’ve been saying for a long time online, while we don’t have a silver bullet, we do have a whole pocket of silver BB’s. Conservation plus electrifying transportation plus a hard line on no new non-CCS coal, etc. add up to a lot.
In talking with newcomers to these problems, that situation is often a hard sell. They really want a single, nearly miraculous silver bullet that Makes It All Go Away, and it’s up to us to show them that there are solutions, just not in exactly the form they expected.
I think we should also have the rule to first reduce emissions before leaning on offsets.
I also have a lot of questions about how effective greenhouse gas credits in a cap-and-trade system will be if they are based on practices that require future monitoring and maintenance to be successful- there is a lot of opportunity for corruption and ineptitude unless very stringent standards are put into place for ensuring the success of our practices.
I would like to put in a plug for my favorite solution that multitasks: Improved (eventually universal) access to contraception and reproductive health services. Women and couples who have access to these services have more control over their lives (not that they will necessarily take advantage of it). It improves the lives of women and reduces poverty. Access to contraception leads to a lowering of the birth rate and eventually (very eventually perhaps, it will be a slow process but we should encourage it nonetheless) negative population growth (this is compounded with increased education and employment opportunities for women). I believe it is by far the most cost effective way to avoid exacerbating all current resource stresses.
When and if considering offsets, please keep organizations that promote and provide reproductive health services in mind, even if they don’t specifically offer quantified carbon offset calculations. They improve the quality of life of millions of families at the same time as providing a generation long reduction in carbon emissions. 1 persons worth, actual impact varies by consumption level, for this reason it is arguable the contributing to organizations in the US (with it’s high consumption level) will have a greater effect on carbon emissions. I split contributions equally between developed and developing nations.
Our current population is not sustainable nor is it compatable with human rights. Every time a woman is forced to have an unwanted child due to lack of access to reproductive services her human rights have been violated. If you can’t control your fertility, how can you plan for any future?
“Nuclear power is a lot cleaner than coal power, but leaves us with wastes, great new targets for terrorism, and the possibility that nuclear materials will fall into the wrong hands. All energy technologies have some drawbacks. But before we start trading one serious set of problems for others, let’s exhaust the potential of the relatively problem-free choices such as efficiency and many renewables..”
Perhaps there should be a rule for climate action that climate actions advocates should know what they are talking about. Climate Action advocates should not play chicken little over nuclear power. Most of what is called nuclear waste, is if fact simi-spent nuclear fuel, that can be reused in Canadian CANDU reactors, or reprocessed and recycled into American reactors. Even radioactive fission daughter products have uses in industry, medicine and as portable CO2 free sources of neat and electricity.
Bill, I would add the following: the problem is international, and so the U.S. must use its tremendous economic clout to effect change in the rest of the world. For example, I believe the U.S. should tax all imports based on their greenhouse gas emissions. This rule needs to be applied quite generally (e.g. palm oil that comes from cutting down rainforest would be taxed along with Chinese products made with coal electricity). Countries that are part of a cap-and-auction system would be exempt from the tax. This may require the U.S. to withdraw from WTO temporarily while the WTO rules are renegotiated.
To Charles Barton’s reprocessing point: MIT’s 2003 The Future of Nuclear Power looked at the potential for nuclear power ( http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/ ). They found that the once-through fuel cycle made the most sense. Here’s an excerpt:
“The result of our detailed analysis of the relative merits of these representative fuel cycles with respect to key evaluation criteria can be summarized as follows: The once through cycle has advantages in cost, proliferation, and fuel cycle safety, and is disadvantageous only in respect to long-term waste disposal; the two closed cycles have clear advantages
only in long-term aspects of waste disposal, and disadvantages in cost, short-term waste issues, proliferation risk, and fuel cycle safety. (See Table.) Cost and waste criteria are likely to be the most crucial for determining nuclear power’s future.”
The fact that reprocessing is possible does not make it appropriate. Reprocessing also does not eliminate the waste disposal problem, though it does change it.
MIT found that there was enough U235 to support 1000 nuclear power plants of 1GW each (i.e. 1TW) for 40 years and recommended that this could be a small part of the solution to global warming.
The real problem with nuclear power is that plants:
(1) cost too much (one of the MIT study authors admitted to me that the numbers in the study now look much too low given recent price increases);
(2) take much too long to build (by the time we build 1000 reactors, it will be too late for the atmosphere).
Solar thermal in the desert is a technology that now looks to be both cheaper and faster to build. Wind is probably cheaper than nuclear today as well. And of course efficiency is cheaper than all of them.
If Mr. Barton is going to chide people for not knowing what they are talking about, he might want to address the issues with the path he suggests that probably kept MIT (and Bill) from suggesting that.
The MIT report was hardly the last word, and only the most poorly informed would believe it so. They failed to consider the possibility of reusing so called reactor waste as reactor fuel in CANDU reactors. They failed to consider the possibility that known reserve of Uranium might be increased by new uranium ore discoveries, and there have been large discoveries since 2003. They failed to consider the that Thorium, which is 3 to 4 times as plentiful as Uranium could be used to produce reactor fuel. They hailed to note the potential of molten salt reactors which are extremely safe, are proliferation resistant, and burn 100 percent of all Uranium and Thorium that pass through them, Thus destroying almost all of the so called nuclear waste and extending the reactor driveneconomy for thousands of years. The claims about costs made by the MIT report are absurd. The Japanese and the French have built large numbers of reactors on time and on budget for far less than MIT claims possible. Four Japanese reactors, currently on order in Texas, are priced at the $1.5 to $1.8 per GW. Coal fired power plants are more expensive. An offshore wind farm off Long Island was recently cancelled. Its reported cost was $811,000,000, for 140 MW of rated power. Thus it would be far cheaper to build Japanese reactors in Texas, and use the electrical grid to send the power to Long Island, than to build local wind farms. Mr. Killian do you really believe that you rae well informed after uncritically reading one flawed documeny?
Rule n+1: At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded. -Ludwig Wittgenstein
You can give ‘em charts and graphs until the polar bears have no home, but first you have to get their attention.
If nothing changes, then it is status quo, Joe, which is what many a politico signed up for along with all those great bennies.
Whereas the truth of the matter is that if nothing changes, it going to get a hell and high water worse.
I would advise that you hand the each of boys and girls in Washington a Mae West and be quit with them.
Move on to the schemers that value thinking ahead and passionate elevator moments.
Watch the rush to nuclear reactors become a flood, once people start realizing the full implications of what is happening now in Greenland. It is time that my fellow liberals stop their idiotic anti-nuclear crapping and start living in 21st century reality