Over my (relatively mild) objection, the copyeditor of the Salon piece on renaming Earth Day (here) changed one letter in the final paragraph:

We have fiddled like Nero for far too long to save the whole earth or all of its species. Now we need a World War II scale effort just to cut our losses and save what matters most. So let’s call it Triage Day. And if worst comes to worst, at least future generations won’t have to change the name again.

I had sent in “if worse comes to worst.” Salon said they were following their style book. Fine. Can’t argue with that. But I had looked it up online at The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, which says (quite reasonably, I think):

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The “Car of the Future,” starring the “Car Talk” guys, is tonight. More info and links to my clips are here.

In this post I will lay out “the solution” to global warming, focusing primarily on the 14 “stabilization wedges.”

Part 1 argued that stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at 450 ppm is not politically possible today, but that it is certainly achievable from an economic and technological perspective. It would require some 14 of Princeton’s “stabilization wedges” — strategies and/or technologies that over a period of a few decades each reduce global carbon emissions by one billion metric tons per year from projected levels (see technical paper here, less technical one here). The reason that we need twice as many wedges as Princeton’s Pacala and Socolow have said we need was explained in Part 1.

I agree with the IPCC, which concluded last year that “The range of stabilization levels assessed can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio of technologies that are currently available and those that are expected to be commercialised in coming decades.” The technologies they say can beat 450 ppm are here. Technology Review, one of the nation’s leading technology magazines, also argued in a cover story two years ago, “It’s Not Too Late,” that “Catastrophic climate change is not inevitable. We possess the technologies that could forestall global warming.”

I do believe only “one” solution exists in this sense — We must deploy every conceivable energy-efficient and low carbon technology that we have today as fast as we can. Princeton’s Pacala and Socolow proposed that this could be done over 50 years, but that is almost certainly too slow.

We’re at 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year — rising 3.3% per year — and we have to average below 18 billion tons a year for the entire century if we’re going to stabilize at 450 ppm. We need to peak around 2015 to 2020 at the latest, then drop at least 60% by 2050 to 15 billion tons (4 billion tons of carbon), and then go to near zero net carbon emissions by 2100.

That’s why a sober guy like IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri, said in November: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” Or as I told Technology Review, “The point is, whatever technology we’ve got now — that’s what we are stuck with to avoid catastrophic warming.”

If we could do the 14 wedges in four decades, we should be able to keep CO2 concentrations to under 450 ppm. If we could do them faster, concentrations could stay even lower. We’d probably need to do this by 2030 to have a shot at getting back to 350 this century. [And yes, like Princeton, I agree we need to do some R&D now to ensure a steady flow of technologies to make the even deeper emissions reductions needed in the second half of the century.]

I am not going to focus on the politics, policies, market factors, or mindset needed to achieve these 14 wedges. That will be the subject of Part 4. But, needless to say, none of this can happen without a serious price for carbon dioxide and a very aggressive technology deployment effort.

So here is the basic solution. I have thrown in a couple extra wedges since I have no doubt that everybody will find something objectionable in at least 2 of these wedges. This is what the entire planet must achieve:

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Our guest blogger is Robert M. Sussman, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and former Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

President Bush and his administration are trying to block the application of existing environmental laws to the problem of climate change, claiming that a “regulatory train wreck” is on the horizon because “unelected regulators and judges” are taking action. Bush explained last week:

Some courts are taking laws written more than 30 years ago — to primarily address local and regional environmental effects — and applying them to global climate change. The Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act were never meant to regulate global climate. For example, under a Supreme Court decision last year, the Clean Air Act could be applied to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. This would automatically trigger regulation under the Clean Air Act of greenhouse gases all across our economy — leading to what Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell last week called, “a glorious mess.”

The truth is that our environmental laws were not written to be static. They are flexible tools to address unanticipated or emerging problems that science identifies over time.

The Clean Air Act is a case in point, as the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v EPA decision illustrates. The administration argued that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are not “air pollutants” under the Act, but the Court rejected this position. It instead concluded that the Act’s definition of pollutant “embraces all airborne compounds of whatever stripe,” and that the Act’s protections against the dangers of air pollution to “public health or welfare” include a wide range of concerns, including effects on climate and weather that can harm people and ecosystems.

Even more far-fetched is the president’s belief that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was not intended to cover global warming — despite being designed to recognize the “profound impact of man’s activity on the interrelations of all components of the natural environment.” The core of NEPA is the requirement that agencies prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for all “major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.” It’s simply not credible to argue that climate change — alone among environmental concerns — does not qualify.

As for the Endangered Species Act, its goal is to protect plant or animal species verging on extinction so that they do not disappear entirely. Why these species are endangered is irrelevant to compliance with the law. Is President Bush suggesting that because the polar bear population is at risk from reduced Arctic ice floes resulting from global warming, it is entitled to less protection under the Act than bald eagles, whose habitat was destroyed by over-development? Clearly, this would make no sense.

Our priority at this juncture should be exploring how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and moderate global warming before we run out of time to take meaningful action. We should use every tool at our disposal. Sensibly implemented, existing laws enable us to get started reducing emissions while Congress debates a more comprehensive and complicated approach. Raising a false alarm about existing laws — without any analysis to back it up — is a diversionary tactic that we can ill afford.

Read more here.

UPDATE: Warming Law notes that the Washington Post editorial board bought into Bush’s “train wreck” argument.

Although NBC was given some stiff competition by Slate and the Washington Post, the judge’s choice for the worst Triage Earth Day week story was unanimous: Dateline NBC.

Sunday night millions of people were watching what seem to be a reasonable hour of television devoted to environmental issues, ending with a fascinating, if not terribly original, story about the melting of the Bolivian glaciers and its likely impact on that country. And then they got to this amazing exchange:

[flv http://images1.americanprogress.org/il80web20037/ClimateProgress/flv/2008/04/BolivianGlacier.320.240.flv]

Pathetic!

Here is the transcript:

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