[David Hawkins is Director of NRDC's climate center. I have the very highest regard for his judgment on matters of climate policy and politics, even when I (rarely) disagree with him. I wrote a scathing critique of the recent USCAP climate blueprint and NRDC's role in it on Thursday (see here). David asked for space to reply in detail. Stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at 450 ppm (let alone below that) is simply not politically possible today, as I've written many times (see " Part 6: What the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill debate tells us" and "Part 7: The harsh lessons of the financial bailout") -- and that means people negotiating climate legislation must make tough choices that will not satisfy everyone. I recommend this post to anyone who wants to understand the challenge of trying to craft a climate bill that can actually pass Congress.]
Joe,
You are and will remain a respected friend. As an author and blogger, you call it as you see it on what needs to happen to emissions and our energy system if we are to avoid a climate catastrophe. And you do a great job at it.
We at NRDC have another job. We must do what has to be done to move this Congress to enact climate protection legislation that will change overnight the kinds of energy and other investments that are made, start the innovation engine spinning, bend our emissions down without further delay, and show the world that the U.S. has emerged from its cave of inaction.
We are buoyed by President-elect Obama’s commitment to act but we will need action from Congress as well. The new Congress contains a growing number of climate protection champions but it also contains a core of obstructionists bent on using every tactic to block any action, other members who think global warming is not enough of a problem to warrant any real change, and members who are inclined to be helpful but not if it involves spending much political capital as they see it. We don’t have time to change who the members of Congress are; we need to change the way current members think about this issue.
There are a number of ways to move Congress to act and NRDC is pursuing all that we believe will help. One important way is to engage deeper and broader support for action from the U.S. business community-a community that until recently was dominated by outspoken opponents of any action to cut global warming pollution. The USCAP Blueprint you attack is an effort to get major American business leaders, joined with a number of U.S. NGOs, firmly committed to working to get this Congress to pass climate protection legislation. It is part of a process designed to make good legislation possible.
This past Thursday the business members of USCAP testified to Congress that action by Congress is urgent, not only to protect the climate but to provide a foundation for economic recovery. Their testimony powerfully challenged those members of Congress whose mindset is still that we cannot afford to act now because they think climate protection means economic sacrifice. The business leaders’ testimony was “yes we can” take action to protect the climate and it will help the economy, not hurt it. The members of USCAP will be a strong force and voice for action in the weeks and months ahead. Without those voices NRDC believes action in Congress would be slower and less effective than it has to be to protect the climate.
Your comment that the Blueprint amounts to “unilateral disarmament” by the NGO members is telling. The political equivalent of mutual assured destruction threats will not protect the climate; it will protect only the status quo. To make change happen we need to realign the players, not just attack them. You seem to think that in the political process only the position of the NGOs matter and the positions of the “bunch of companies” in USCAP don’t matter. If that were true we would have enacted strong climate protection laws in the Clinton Administration.
Your critique of the substance of the Blueprint focuses on emission targets, offsets and allowance distribution (I have already responded — here and here — to your incorrect description of the coal provisions), so let me say a few words on those topics.
Emission Targets
On emission targets, you point out that the science justifies a target tighter than a 20% reduction from today’s levels by 2020. Of course it does. The science justifies having kept emissions well below today’s levels starting 20 years ago!
But just saying what the science justifies does not ignite the engine of policy change unless it is coupled with a serious political strategy for overcoming the claims and anxieties about the costs of doing what the science justifies. The targets during the first decade of a climate protection program are among the most important and most challenging of a bill’s design features. Since the U.S. is late in cutting emissions, we need to make up for lost time and that argues for faster, not slower, reduction schedules. But too many actors in the political debate are still concerned about the cost and feasibility of meeting deep emission reduction targets, particularly in the early years. Changing these views is the challenge we face.
As a blogger you have the responsibility of stating what the science justifies without needing to be concerned about formulating a strategy to overcome the political obstacles to effecting change. Keep at it but don’t ignore the fact that we will need more than the truth as you see it to make change happen.
You know that since the election President-elect Obama talked of returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and was silent about targets for the crucial years between then and the long-term 2050 target. The Blueprint targets that NRDC supports will require reducing emissions to 7% below 1990 levels by 2020 and all of the USCAP members, including the 26 major business members, support reductions at least as strong as those mentioned by President-elect Obama for 2020 and all support reductions of 42% by 2030 as well as 80% reductions by 2050. Yet you say that the Blueprint, which commits these business leaders to support nothing weaker in the near-term than what the President-elect mentioned and contains a call for even stronger reductions supported by NRDC and others, will move “the center to the right and vitiate the results of the election.” That is a strange interpretation!
And focusing only on the near-term targets for the cap component of the climate protection program, while ignoring the power of additional policies to drive reductions further, is a mistake. The Blueprint contains a sweeping set of additional polices that I’ll say more about in a moment.
Offsets
On offsets, you argue that today’s offsets markets are rife with fraud and if compliance with the cap were achieved only with the offsets potentially allowed under the Blueprint’s maximum limits, that we would not see the reductions in industrial and energy sector emissions we must have if we are to protect the climate. NRDC has no argument with you that if fraud is not prevented and if offsets are the dominant means for compliance, the outcome would be unacceptable.
But the Blueprint calls for sweeping complementary measures in addition to the cap to drive emission reductions and those measures operate independently of whatever offsets are authorized. The Blueprint calls for specific programs that will drive emission reductions in all of the major sources of industrial, transportation, commercial, and residential sources of global warming pollution:
- CO2 emission standards for new coal-fired powerplants and financial incentives to speed commercial use of carbon capture and storage;
- GHG performance standards for the entire transportation fuel pool, replacing the piecemeal renewable fuels standard of current law that ignores emissions from fossil-based transportation fuels;
- A structured process to improve GHG performance standards for vehicles;
- A suite of requirements and financial incentives to improve transportation system efficiency that will reduce VMT growth, reward smart growth policies, and provide more and lower-polluting alternatives to meet transportation needs for people and goods;
- Codes, standards and financial incentives to reduce global warming pollution resulting from running our buildings and appliances-the source of about half of America’s CO2 emissions.
Since the recommended emission targets in the Blueprint are for both capped sectors and the U.S. economy as a whole, a combination of the cap, the complementary measures mentioned above, and other policies designed to achieve additional reductions outside the cap will be needed to achieve both of those objectives. The Blueprint also calls for a reserve price for the auction of allowances “set at a level that helps to avoid prices that are too low to encourage long-term capital investments in low- and no-carbon technologies.” These provisions are designed to prevent a scenario of an “offsets-only” pathway that you and we agree is not acceptable.
It’s also important to reflect on why offsets are included in many climate protection proposals, often in amounts that concern many of us. The most powerful driver of this appetite for access to large amounts of offsets is, in NRDC’s opinion, the continuing anxiety among many policymakers that the transition to a low-GHG economy will be “too costly” unless such offsets are available. Many of us believe these anxieties are unwarranted and that deployment of cleaner energy alternatives can be achieved at much lower overall costs (indeed with net cost savings when all impacts are considered) than conventional economic models suggest. But we need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that we have not yet persuaded enough actors in the policy process that our assessment is correct.
It is not sufficient as a political strategy to simply point out the perils of an excessive reliance on offsets. To create a comfort level that lower levels of authorized offsets will provide an effective cost-containment mechanism requires doing a better job of persuasion that the conventional estimates of costs are not correct and that there are superior approaches to hedging against the possibility that costs could be higher than estimated.
Fortunately, persuasion is a renewable resource and it has not been tapped out with the release of the Blueprint. I would urge you to devote more of your considerable analytic and communications skills to making the case in a persuasive fashion that not only are excessive offsets bad for the health of a climate protection program but that there are reliable and robust alternative approaches to address the anxieties of those who believe large offset supplies are needed.
Distributing Allowance Value
Finally, a few words on distribution of allowance value. Note the term “allowance value.” It is the term used throughout the Blueprint’s discussion of this issue and it does not specify whether the method of distributing such value is by auction or statutory allocation of allowances. While much public discourse has employed the shorthand of “auction” versus “free” distribution of allowances, the real policy debate is over the purposes of allowance value distribution rather than the method of distributing that value.
The Blueprint recommends these priority purposes for allocating allowances in the first decades of the program:
- transform our economy;
- modernize our nation’s energy infrastructure;
- smooth the transition for consumers to a low-carbon economy; and
- adapt to the impacts of global warming.
If you think these purposes are off-base or missing something major, share your views. If you think the Blueprint does a flawed job in implementing these purposes, point out the flaws.
You quote another group’s claim that the Blueprint “would reward corporate polluters with hundreds of billions of dollars of giveaways.” That’s wrong. The entire emphasis of the Blueprint is on distributing allowance value to protect consumers and achieve the other purposes listed above. The largest and most specific recommendation for use of allowance value calls for distribution, not to pollution sources, but to local electric and gas distribution companies with the explicit requirement that all of the value be passed through to end-use consumers both directly and through energy efficiency programs. Other recommendations call for distribution of allowance value to protect low-income consumers, for worker transition and training, to drive the technologies we need to operate a low-carbon economy, and to provide resources to assist managers of vulnerable resources and vulnerable communities here and abroad to respond to and reduce the damage resulting from climate change that is unavoidable.
The Blueprint’s recommendations for allowance value distribution to pollution sources are the exception, not the rule, and are temporary. Thus, there is a recommendation for some allowance value to be directed for transitional purposes to energy-intensive industries with trade-exposed commodity products. If U.S. firms that make trade-exposed commodity products shift that production overseas we will not achieve the emission reductions we need. Providing some allowance value to prevent this is not “rewarding polluters;” it is aimed at protecting the emission reduction objectives of the program. The Blueprint explicitly calls for eliminating this distribution as the competitive imbalance disappears. Another exception is the recommendation for a temporary distribution of some allowance value to competitive power generating sources for the portion of compliance costs that cannot readily be passed through to customers. This recommendation calls for phasing out this distribution in a manner that will provide strong incentives for timely investment in low carbon alternatives.
There is room for debate on the specifics of these exceptions but it is important to recognize that the Blueprint represents support by 26 major U.S. businesses for principles and specifics on allowance value distribution that are miles away from those who are calling for allowances to be given primarily to emission sources. Bank that progress, don’t ignore it.
The business members of USCAP have come a long way in just a bit over two years and the positions they have committed to advocate have evolved strongly in the right direction. The Blueprint represents the state of that evolutionary process as of the start of the new Administration and Congress. The Blueprint’s signers say “we want to be clear that this is not the only possible path forward and we stand ready to work with the Administration, Congress, and other stakeholders to develop environmentally protective, economically sustainable, and fair climate change legislation.”
Joe, you are a brilliant analyst of what has to happen in the real world to protect the climate. But you need a new yardstick to evaluate policy proposals–not just how they match up to what you and I would like to happen but what they do to increase the chances of enacting serious legislation by this Congress this year. I and NRDC’s leadership believe that engaging a large number of major firms in a committed effort to enact climate legislation now poses far fewer risks for the planet than demanding an outcome that is not supported by a serious strategy to overcome the real obstacles that we still face in Congress.
– David Hawkins
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
I think David is making a thoughtful and considered argument. I reported on the US CAP story for the newsletters that I edit in my day job, and although I found a lot of nits to pick, I was heartened by the leadership and by the impressive list of leading companies involved. So — in a week that had a fair bit of bad news — I chose to be mildly optimistic that this isn’t the end of the line. It’s the first step towards the light.
We have a long, long way to go. But I’m counting on two things to speed the process.
The first, sadly, is Mother Earth. If Hadley and NASA are correct — and I’m certain they are — La Niña will lift this year, and we’re likely to once again start setting global temperature records, with greater storm impacts, dramatic ice loss in the Arctic and Greenland, more droughts, methane surges… The whole nine yards. That might be the way that global warming finally gains greater attention than the global recession, and becomes the defining issue of our time. It might be our window of opportunity, although the human face of the tragedy will cut many of us to our very souls.
The economics of the low-carbon movement also gives me hope. Again, in my day job, I read hundreds of energy efficiency and clean tech stories every week, and I’m struck by how often the same corporate names appear. Companies make the first step because government compels them. They take the second — and subsequent steps — because it makes smart business sense. Companies investing in low-carbon technologies become leaner, and more competitive, and their bottom line improves. So they advance their plans, and reach their greenhouse gas targets by 2010, say, instead of 2013.
I don’t know what it will take to reach a critical mass, so that it becomes the norm. But if the economics didn’t make sense again and again, I wouldn’t have a job.
If it’s not politically possible to do any better than USCAP today, then I’m afraid really what you’re saying is that it’s time to start filling sandbags.
We will never have a more pro-environment Speaker, or Commerce Committee Chair, or EPW chair, or EPA administrator, or President of the United States. We will probably never have more Ds in the House and Senate than we do now. And most importantly a President who not only gets it, but has the political capital to make it happen. Furthermore, big legislative proposals don’t happen in the 7th, 8th years of a presidency–they happen in the first 18 months.
IPCC says the developed world as a whole needs to be at 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020, including whatever we can get from funding international assistance. A 7% cut from 1990 (the most aggressive end of USCAP) might do the job if that was domestic-only and partnered with a robust fund for deforestation and clean energy for the developing world, but that has to come in addition to, not instead of, domestic cuts.
If the best we can do now is a bill that gets us 0-7% below 1990 levels with a stunning 3 million tons a year of offsets (which is another way of saying zero domestic reductions at all through 2030), then we’re cooked. Period.
If this proposal came out under Bush, DeLay, and Lott, then I could at least understand the political argument. But to put this out under the most pro-environment government imaginable in US politics is to tacitly assert that it’s simply not possible to solve this problem.
Now, I don’t believe that one bit. I think if this President went on TV right now and said, “look people, it’s time to get serious; we need to cut emissions, and that means there’s going to be a ton of new, really good jobs in the renewable energy economy but it also means some folks are going to have to sacrifice. But we need to do it because if we don’t we will leave our kids with an unrecognizable planet, and that’ not the America I believe in…” he’d rally a level of public support for the environment that we’ve never seen. No one can say that it’s not possible to win under those circumstances. We’ve never had a president with this much of a mandate who agreed with us. Now’s the time to ratchet up expectations, not argue for giving up.
I have to admit that David Hawkins response has really made me think and it’s made me change my view on this issue.
I agreed with Joe’s analysis and I frankly saw the USCAP Blueprint as a sellout that merely gave big business and polluters the cover they need to keep doing business as usual.
But I now realize even though our climate situation calls for urgent action immediately, the best that’s possible with our current political mix and the weight of business power is that which we can actually get approved today. I realize that makes less ambitious goals necessary on the way to getting where we need to go.
The truth seems to be that only a large scale climate caused crisis is going to move the majority to the immediacy and the sense of urgency they should already have. That majority is never going to take preemptive action before they’re forced to.
So getting a significant number of them to merely accept the reality of man-made climate change and the need to control and reduce GHG emissions is a major milestone. And putting this blueprint group in that position makes it easier to take each new incremental/exponential step in the climate crisis to them and negotiate tougher and tougher emissions and anti-carbon legislation and shorter more immediate deadlines.
This forum is such a valuable and continuing education for me. I really appreciate the opportunity to hear these arguments from both Joe and from the people sitting at the table.
It is simply not enough for my childred, but especially their children.
Hold their feet to the fire!
Help those fools inside the beltway to …
David’s letter is a reminder of why we need to continue building a real movement to change the political dynamic. If the argument on the one hand is, we need deep cuts, and the argument on the other hand is, deep cuts are not politically possible, then the only way to change that is to build the kind of movement that make them politically possible. That’s why we did StepItUp, and why we are building 350.org, and why we’ll be doing civil disobedience on a large scale in Washington on March 2. I have no problem with David’s description of the current reality, and I trust he will do his damnedest to cut a much much much better deal if we give him some more room to work with–even if it means annoying the hell out of his partners in the business world. But giving him that room is our job–NRDC is not really set up to change grassroots sentiment.
Because the one thing never to forget it is: in the end this negotiation is not between business and enviros, not between the U.S. and China–it’s between people and physics. And physics doesn’t bargain or compromise. So we need to make sure that people do. Help is always appreciated–hope everyone is planning something sweet for Oct. 24, our day of global action at 350.org.
A bit offtopic but very important nevertheless:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5_spDNuA4Q
This is an incredible new video from Steven Chu, posted from change.gov, where he analyzes stuff like climate tipping points, permafrost methane release, how the climate on the Ice age was only 6 degrees colder than today and how urgent it is for us to take bold action now. He also gives some hints about the direction the Obama administration will take, like a new national grid, massive investment on wind, solar and geothermal, focus on research and basic science and much more.
This is a must see video for everyone interested in climate change and surely gives me hope that the new administration takes this issue 100% seriously.
Maybe it could warrant a post from Joe, so that it gets the attention it deserves…
For our changing climate, there is no status quo, no business as usual. Warming and destabilization increases no matter what politics says.
Politics and commerce foolishly think they can rule over science.
Policy should begin with the science.
OK serious suggestions; You are essentially asking for short term, politically palatable actions. Nothing too radical until the clamoring begins…. well there are a few.
1. Fully fund climate research. It is falling apart from 8 years of purposeful neglect. Proper instrumentation will deliver better climate models.
2. Get some serious risk analysis going.. Insurance industry, banks and OTHER governments plot out risks. It should be like an agency like OMB.
3. Carbon Fuel companies have no business advertising. Stop all of it – just like the tobacco industry halted advertising.
4. Attitude change: Quit respecting those who promote magical thinking of climate rescue or continued denialism.
To begin with, I have recently lost a lot of respect for both the Nature Conservancy and NRDC, not over climate change avoidance, but of the manner in which they have backed off rational solutions to the major problems of water, climate change and the eco-system of the California Delta. In this, one benfactor appears to be Bechtel Corporation, a major player in the game of water privatizaiton. So, I read this with a great deal of doubt.
Hawkins makes a valid point about the nature of Congress. The only thing that most members of Congress fear is not having the money to run their next campaign and that, of course, is dependent on major contributions from business or from the owners of the business. So, yes, it is important to make sure that members of the business community come along.
I find that some of our friends in Canada are saying that Cap and Trade does not work. “Alternatives such as emission reduction targets, cap and trade, cap and dividend, do not work, as proven by honest efforts of the ‘greenest’ countries to comply with the Kyoto Protocol.” While they call on Hansen as an authority, it is clear that corporations cheat and that while the corporations involved in USCAP may all have integrity, it has been shown that even some of those who were supposed to audit emission trades did not.
I just am not ready to take it on faith that the type of corporate behavior that gave us the housing / mortgage crisis will not now be selling derivatives based on carbon trades.
Wes Rolley: CoChair, EcoAction Committee, Green Party US.
Maybe you guys haven’t been outside lately, but where I am if you mentioned global warming as a problem you’d be seen as crazy.
[JR: Maybe you deniers haven't been outside of your narrow anti-scientific reality, but any place where scientists are, if you mentioned outside temperatures as serious evidence against global warming, you'd be seen as crazy.]
There’s got to be leadership to convince those with the responsibility of saving the planet what needs to be done….baring that, there is Presidential Veto.
This has got to be a war against the climate if we are going to have a chance of making it through the next couple of centuries.
@Bill–
I agree totally with the general thrust of your comment, but I think we’re selling the American people way, way short by explaining away USCAP as somehow representing politics as the art of the possible.
Obama ran for President with a very clear, quite strong platform, and he won big time, even in coal states like PA, IN, OH. He went to MI and said we need to raise fuel efficiency standards. He talked about climate in some of his biggest speeches. It’s not like he was a stealth candidate on this issue. McCain went after Obama on “drill baby drill” as hard as he possibly could, and look what good it did him. Two elections in a row the American people have voted by landslide margins for candidates who were very clearly calling for aggressive action on clean energy and climate.
(For the record, Obama needs to tighten up some things in his plan, like most importantly his 2020 target. His platform, which is basically a carbon-copy of the Boxer-Sanders bill he cosponsored in the senate, only deals with the domestic side, which is only part of the solution. But his platform is a pretty darn good starting point–a domestic economy-wide cut to 80% below 1990 by 2050, NO offsets, 100% auction.)
USCAP might be the limit of what polluting corporate CEOs will sign onto at this moment, but their candidates lost! The people are demanding real, major change, and I think David is really misreading this moment in American politics.
Its a difficult job to strike the balance right, especially since I believe, like , that this is probably the year that we have to get it right. There wont be a 2nd chance.
…..since I believe , like Tom Burke, that this is probably the year that we have to get it right. There wont be a 2nd chance.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/Tom_Burke.jsp
Here in the UK, back in 1997, I wasn’t too worried that Blair’s new Labour government was being slow, timid and passive in putting forward genuine measures for change.
There was always the second year, or the third.
10 years later I am in despair. The talk from Blair/Brown was always magnificent, the promises were always ambitious.
But the “real things done score” is just 1 out of 10.
Please don’t make the same mistakes. The big changes won’t necessarily follow from small beginnings…
How tragic that it has taken so long (nearly 40 years) for NRDC to confess its loyalty to big business rather than to the public and to science. At a recent debate on carbon trading vs. carbon taxes, NRDC boasted of how the “environmental community” was working with corporations, even though this “working” was a private deal between a grand total of 3 groups (NRDC, EDF, WRI), as opposed to the nearly two dozen groups who presented their “Transition to Green” report to Obama. NRDC’s placement of money before survival coincides with their in-house principle of defending Business As Usual, and flies in the face of all credible science which says our first duty is to end the use of coal; nonetheless NRDC and USCAP derive their entire scheme from the assumption that coal will continue to be used—thus creating a self fulfilling prophecy that the world cannot reduce CO2 emissions as drastically as science and the other environmental groups demand. NRDC is mendaciously pretending that their plan will avoid hardship and sacrifice, even though it will simply postpone these to a date by which they will be orders of magnitude worse and will require, as Nicholas Stern pointed out, far more money to deal with the consequences. The tragedy is compounded by the fact that NRDC and EDF, now part of the corporate partnership seeking desperately to preserve the perks of the business community within the fragmenting model of capitalism, monopolize the public debate and the attention of congress and the media, while the voices of both science and sanity go unheeded at best and mocked at worst. The American public continues to be ill served and deceived when it thinks that the word “Defense” in NRDCs’ name works in their interest. In reality it means Defense of those forces and interests who are destroying the world.
This latest sellout makes me so glad I didn’t renew our membership!! And I decided not to renew when I read the last NRDC members’ publication supporting “clean coal.”
Shame on NRDC for advocating capitulation and cloaking that in terms of “practicality.” You are part of the problem.
In “The American President” — a highly underrated Aaron Sorkin film — there’s a scene where the President’s chief of staff (Martin Sheen) and the President (Michael Douglas) are having an intense argument. Sheen screams the following question at Douglas: “Do you fight the fights that can be won, or do you fight the fights that must be fought?”
And that is the question for today with global warming. Washington insiders like to refer to politics — especially congressional politics — as the “art of the possible.” Well, the art of the possible is on a collision course with the demands of the necessary.
Political reality cannot trump scientific reality, unless we’re giving style points for a Pyrrhic victory.
I think a lot of NRDC and of David. But because we wasted the past 8 years, we don’t have the luxury of anything by drastic and immediate action.
If the USCAP wants to increase the market price of carbon without first eliminating the tens of billions of federal “fossil fuel” subsidies, then they want to drive with one foot on the accelerator and one on the gas (making a mess).
The founding principle of the country is revolution against tyranny. We can create an energy revolution against the tyranny of climate collapse. The percieved costs of not killing ourselves and the biosphere are based on fraudulent perspectives. As Lovins, Stern and others have alluded to, their negative sign in front of (their) cost dollars will turn into a positive for the people. We shall prevail (and profit) unless we have business as usual. Because of years of corruption, time for bold action has passed. Now, we need a revolution of “economics”.
Does anyone believe that once we have climate legislation enacted, and once we see that the economy is not destroyed by a CO2 price, that the 2030 or 2050 targets will not be made more difficult or that other aspects of the legislation that are problematic won’t be corrected? If not, you’d have to believe this was a “set it and forget it” sort of issue, which doesn’t seem to be consistent with the history of other environmental issues.
Kevin:
I guarantee you that once a bill is passed — inadequate though it will be — the doubters and deniers will say we’ve already dealt with climate. It’s time to let it play out and meanwhile, we have to move on to other serious issues.
Will that argument prevail? I don’t know. But we’ll hear it.
It took a decade to get back to the CAA. And we don’t have a decade.
There is certainly common sense in advocating for incremental change that is assured of passage in Congress.
If this were most any other problem that we were addressing, you could argue that the “what is possible” approach may be the most appropriate tactic. The hitch, is that the problem being addressed is not like other problems.
As Bill McKibben said, “this negotiation is not between business and enviros, not between the U.S. and China–it’s between people and physics. And physics doesn’t bargain or compromise”.
The physics of climate change don’t give a damn about what is politically expedient or who’s in the White House.
I agree with Creative Greenius’ words… “The truth seems to be that only a large scale climate caused crisis is going to move the majority to the immediacy and the sense of urgency they should already have. That majority is never going to take preemptive action before they’re forced to.”
I differ, however, with his conclusion. We simply can not rely on the business as usual mode. We don’t have the time to convince the majority. We can not wait for people to “get it” or for the ripe political moment. And when the that large scale climate caused crisis kicks in and starts to change some minds, it will be far too late.
The bottom line is that we simply have to face the bottom line – that being, that what we’re up against IS physics, non-negotiable PHYSICS.
When we forget this and make the assumption that we can take the political expediency route, or do anything less than ALL that we must, we do so at the peril of life as we know it.
It’s time that our messaging, our legislation and our leadership speaks to the dire emergency that we face.
David Hawkins says:
The Blueprint recommends these priority purposes for allocating allowances in the first decades of the program:
• transform our economy;
• modernize our nation’s energy infrastructure;
• smooth the transition for consumers to a low-carbon economy; and
• adapt to the impacts of global warming.
If you think these purposes are off-base or missing something major, share your views. If you think the Blueprint does a flawed job in implementing these purposes, point out the flaws.
=======major miss:
Systemically, a primary reason the US dollar has the strength it currently enjoys is because if one needs OPEC oil, one needs a US dollar to buy it. Remove this crutch and it is the fiat currency of a nation living wildly beyond its means, with a savings rate of zero, a debt and unfunded obligations (at just the federal level) of $175,000 per capita, that needs to balance its budget, and needs to keep up its payments on past borrowing. This per capita figure is according to the GAO and the close of books in 2007. With all that has been done this year to bail out unregulated and explosive credit expansion in the financial sector, I expect this number to grow well beyond $200,000 per capita when tabulated after the close of books and 2008. In the last seven years this figure has grown 158% to $52.7 trillion.
The USCAP Blueprint work does not seem to have factored this fiscal condition into the thinking that was used to advance its plan. At least that is how I am understanding what is stated and implied concerning the economic assumptions that frame the rational for the Blueprint. A “recovery” of the economy of global capitalism, and the associated ”reserve currency“ status of the US dollar, seems to be unquestioned in the thinking used to craft the report. To the degree this is so, it is a major oversight; a major miss.
Successful reduction of carbon emissions will systemically degrade the demand for OPEC oil. Reduced demand for OPEC oil degrades the perceived strength of the US dollar. That resulting degradation is exponential for several reasons. Besides the OPEC support, the IMF and World Bank have created lots of third world debt that is denominated in US dollars. The third world need for dollars to pay the interest on its loans (as well as OPEC oil), required them to sell their natural resources at fire sale prices. This, besides supporting the dollar, allowed US citizens to enjoy a higher standard of living due to inexpensive foreign resources and goods while real wages in this country declined. The growing ubiquity of computers with exponentially expanding power and interconnectedness allowed business efficiency to reach, formally, unimagined levels. From ”just-in-time“ supply chains, to ”ownership-to-the-point-of-sale“ payment schemes, to SDOs, new profits were squeezed out of commerce. These profits, in turn, were leveraged and recycled through regulated and unregulated fractional reserve banking dynamics that were fed by a frenzied cycle of greed and fear until, hollowed out from the inside, all that is left of global capitalism is its collapsing house of cards.
Global capitalism’s legacy is its fiscal monoculture. Its sustenance, credit, has ceased to fall. This is because most things that need and can be indebted are already over-indebted. Central banks’ attempts to add liquidity are, relative to the interconnectedness of the crisis, and the environmental, social and economic injustice it is built upon, like a 10 minute sprinkle on a corn crop during the dog days of August after eight weeks of no rain: beyond feeling good at the time, it is of no use. The year’s crop in such situations is a write off; but for more credit, the farm and the farmer are bankrupt.
Back to the economic assumptions of USCAP Blueprint: as our OPEC crutch is shortened through a required lowering of demand, peak oil, and/or both, the US will have to self-fund its deficits. To do that without wages rising–a lot–the consumption needed to restart the engine of the economy precludes such savings. The economy that is assumed will rise from its death bed is structured–and controlled–to prevent wages from increasing. Change that, raise wages, and the differed hyper-inflation (hidden in the no-longer-measured growth of M3) is systemically uncaged. The resulting dilemma is a policy maker’s Catch 22. Nothing less than a death of a consumption-based economic system must be the choice of how to revitalize a consumption-based economy. This is an oxymoron. The aforementioned over-indebtedness portends multiple and simultaneous additional threats to the US dollar as a reserve curency. We are in a ”perfect storm,“ hence the exponential degradation of the US dollar. No amount of wishful thinking and positive affirmations can change this. The farm has been gambled and lost. The USCAP Blueprint work was done in denial of this . . . _BIG_ miss!
If a substitute crutch could be fashioned for the US dollar, the bleakness I have outlined might have a bright spot for the elite. An assertion was made at USCA’s posted press conference that the US is the global leader in energy efficiency technology. Such a technological prowess could be perceived to have value, and, if controlled by the US, could replace OPEC oil as a means of maintaining the world’s enslavement to our currency. However, as another poster noted in another thread, the US is not a leader, technologically or otherwise, in matters of energy efficiency (the almost former President Bushes assertion to the contrary). In addition, most, if not all, of the technology needed to live within a sustainable carbon footprint already exists–though not at our current or projected population levels, nor living our first world lifestyles. To the degree this is true, the USCAP Blueprint seems to be more interested in transforming global capitalism to maintain an unsustainable status quo for a privileged elite than solving the climate change crisis in a way the is relevant for the preponderance of the planet’s human population.
Transforming our carbon-based global capitalistic economy to something other than what it is is going to cause and require suffering. The poor and oppressed are far more advanced in their relationship with suffering–even to the point of death–than the first world thanks, in part, to the current iteration of global capitalism that relegates them to such a lot in life. Existing technology–and much of it is already manufactured in their countries–can produce sustainable lifestyles that would also be an improvement on what they are subjected to. Therefore, given that the hardships, physical and psychological, for reducing carbon emissions with existing technology, only negatively impacts the privileged, why would the dispossessed of the world continue to be the slave gangs in another post-carbon iteration of global capitalism when that enslavement is, for them, unnecessary and a poor
bargain?
Taking an argument implicated by this question one step further, the simplest answer that benefits the most people is the best one. In addition, given that the trend in the changes climate science are requiring of climate modeling, this trend strongly indicates we have already tipped into klimakatastrophe. With the existing economy, denial withstanding, collapsing, a solution that, as the initial plan for trading carbon credits envisioned, could lift the poor out of poverty and save a planet for everyone, is precisely what the economic collapse is clearing the way for. The obstacle, a loss of wealth by the elite, has been accomplished (coincidentally, by the elite). A radical ”do over“–that the USCAP Blueprint seemed to feel was not possible–is not only possible, it is all that can, responsibly, be done. That ours is a time when a radical do over is required is a cause for hope.
Therefore, a better–and more humane–strategy is one that trades the comfort of the few for immediate and massive action necessary to possibly untip the system from its tip into klimakatastrophe. This would benefit the many, and, denial withstanding, everyone. Such a framing might engender the massive popular support which is pointed out to be a necessary social condition for even small changes. Using an iteration of the argument the President-elect made in his speech on the economic bail out a few weeks back, not leading is not an option, therefore bold unflinching leadership is being chosen . . . and, yes we can! As David argues, the massive change needed is not a policy that the current crop of elected officials would provide leadership for, including, it would seem, the President-elect–though he can yet prove me wrong. Pandering to such pragmatism is precisely the thinking that created the global warming problem trying to be solved.
Einstein was not out to lunch when he observed that the thinking that creates a problem cannot be used to solve it . . . but the USCAP Blueprint effort seems to be counting on this being the case. If so, I am not convinced by its argument and do not buy it. More is possible. More–even the improbable–is ours, but for fear and greed, to grasp.
Steven Biel’s comment hits the nail on the head: the fastest way to move America toward an aggressive response is for President Obama to go on national TV, with an address that lays it out clearly, i.e., “Look, climate disruption is real, it’s serious, it’s caused by our burning of fossil fuels, and we need to act aggressively NOW in order to preserve Earth for our kids.”
What really scares the daylights out of me is that human nature is to learn from our mistakes–and we don’t have that opportunity with this issue. We have to make the choice based on what our best scientists are saying now.
To wait until the consequences are clear is to kiss Homo sapiens goodbye!
When, as happened this winter, predictions informed by global warming theory are bested by those issued by the Farmer’s Almanac, your “science” is worthless.
[JR: Gotta love you deniers. BRRRRRR! It's cold outside in the winter -- therefore science has been disproved!]
“Greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less.”
President Obama, January 20th 2009
While I have often been frustrated by NRDC myself, I have great sympathy for their attempts to build a coalition around a blueprint for climate legislation that is massively more aggressive than anything business has endorsed in the past. Anyone who thinks that turning around this ship we call the federal government is easy or that all democrats think alike (energy issues are regional, not partisan, and yes all politics is local) is fooling themselves. Getting on a high horse about the impending doom of mankind and re-hashing tired arguments about the idiocy of policymakers is a losing strategy with lawmakers — they want to know, yes but how does this affect my constituents today, which goes to David’s point about persuasion. But, like global warming, we may be reaching a tipping point in Congress — just a few years ago, Sentor Inhofe (!) was Chairman of the Senate EPW Committee, Clear Skies almost passed, and legislators couldn’t agree on early action legislation! Now we’re arguing about whether a blueprint for climate change legislation that is light years beyond that debate goes far enough. Let’s not grab those sandbags yet. Give NRDC credit for inserting itself into the daily, ugly grind of law-making, which we all like to thumb our noses at and claim we float above. The 60′s and 70′s saw an incredible flury of environmental legislation that the 80′s and 90′s reacted against. We can hope the pendulum is swinging back in the right direction, and if the past is any guide, it can happen quickly.
David’s point that environmental groups in USCAP must consider political strategy, and not just science, is absolutely right. But is the blueprint good strategy?
By finding a compromise between some environmental groups and some dirty industry companies, USCAP’s blueprint puts a stake in the sand for global warming policy. While it is too early to tell how heavy the stake is, it will inevitably draw politically-feasible outcomes towards itself. Industry groups asking for a weaker bill or no action will find their position less tenable in the face of industrial brethren that say the blueprint could be done without economic harm. Likewise, environmental groups will find it harder to demand stronger action with their allies having endorsed a weaker position.
Thus whether the move is helpful or harmful to strong global warming policy depends on what we would have gotten without it. If we would have gotten something worse, it will increase the likelihood of getting something better, and vice versa.
It is for this level of strategy that David has failed to give a convincing argument. Would we really have not been able to get anything better than this without the blueprint? The reaction of the environmental community makes it clear that most think too much was given away; we believe we can do more, and probably still can, despite the blueprint.
David argues, convincingly, that the industry groups that participated in USCAP also made impressive concessions. But it is not relevant which side gave up more, what’s relevant is what is possible now. The USCAP strategy, from the participating environmental groups’ perspective, was based on the assumption that the industry heel-dragging that has been the biggest obstacle for climate policy in the last decade would continue to be insurmountable. But the strategy fails to recognize the power of grassroots organizing and visionary leadership to sweep over the heads of special interests.
While USCAP was busy finding a document some people from all sides could agree on, Americans were busy organizing to kick out the naysayers and vote in the visionaries. So out comes the compromise between the industry and the enviros, after the enviros already won the public debate.
This isn’t a time to compromise, it’s time to follow the mandate of the American people and get it right. As David concedes, the blueprint doesn’t get it right.
- Timothy, Environment America Global Warming Advocate
Timothy has it right. Hawkins is still living in 20007, before the election. We now have not just a House, but also a Senate and a President that “get it”. The business community is coming on board, as businesspeople realize both the boost our economy needs in “green jobs” but also the existing negative impact we already see from global warming. Indeed, many now believe we have already passed the point that global warming is now costing our economy more than the cost of a cure, in terms of % of GDP. So an aggressive approach makes sense. The flaw, though, is in the country-by-country target approach outlined by the UNFCC. We need a global cap & trade system, with a 100% auction of all measurable emissions. And we need it NOW. The time for change has come. This is no time to surrender to the naysayers who LOST the election!
The only way to fully eliminate panic and anxiety attacks from your life is to rid yourself of the thoughts of having another one