The dynamic duo of disinformation and doubletalk return

Please click here to read my Salon piece, “Don’t Believe the Fossil-Fuel Lies.”

Last week, Michael Shellenberger, President of The Breakthrough Institute (TBI), wrote “Obama’s Climate Suicide Threat.”  He argued that Waxman’s and Obama’s embrace of making polluters pay for global warming pollution through a carbon cap — along with the Obama EPA’s pursuit of regulatory standards after finding CO2 a threat to Americans’ health and welfare — was political suicide for progressive politicians.

No wonder the uber-conservative deniers at the Competitive Enterprise Institute started praising and quoting the analysis in their own attacks on climate action.  Yesterday, Salon published an updated version, with TBI’s Ted Nordhaus added as coauthor:  “Obama is just blowing smoke: The White House says it’s serious about climate change. But its plan to regulate carbon emissions is doomed to fail.”

Now what is astounding about those two TBI pieces — beyond the myriad misstatements and disinformation they contain — is that in an October 2007 online debate with them, I was able to get Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus to admit (click here):

Romm asks if we embrace Obama’s plan. Not only do we embrace it, we’ve been advocating such a plan since 2002 … Obama’s energy plan, like the plan that we outline below, recognizes the need for regulatory standards and a cap on emissions.

Mind-boggling.  Just 18 months ago, Shellenberger and Nordhaus endorsed a plan — heck, they said it was their plan all along — that they now label as not serious, as political suicide and as doomed to fail.

The Waxman-Markey Bill is almost identical to what Obama campaigned on. Turns out Shellenberger and Nordhaus were for the Obama plan before before they were against it.

Both TBI pieces are filled with misstatements and disinformation that will warm the hearts of any anti-scientific conservative looking for ammunition to undermine climate action, starting with TBI’s attacks on Rep. Henry Waxman and his appearance on PBS’ The Tavis Smiley Show:

Waxman’s blunt statement that the goal of cap and trade is to raise energy prices was deeply off-message for green groups, which have long insisted that energy efficiency and conservation would prevent energy prices from rising. But it was only the latest in a series of setbacks for climate legislation.

Where to begin?  Green groups have most certainly not “long insisted that energy efficiency and conservation would prevent energy prices from rising.”  They — and I and McKinsey and many others — have long insisted that energy efficiency and conservation would prevent energy bills from rising.  If Shellenberg and Nordhaus don’t understand the difference between energy prices and energy bills here, then they have no business participating in the climate discussion.  And if they do understand the difference, then they have no business writing this article.

Of course the price for dirty energy will and must rise to solve the climate crisis. It is not “deeply off-message” to say so.  It is a major talking point for conservative inactivists and The Breakthrough Institute — and a science fiction fantasy — to suggest that we could develop and deploy miracle breakthrough technologies that will sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the absence of a carbon price (see “The breakthrough technology illusion“).

How many times must people tell Shellenberger and Nordhaus that no technology breakthroughs are going to deliver carbon free power that is anywhere near the price of power from existing coal plants?  Yes, this country (and all rich countries) must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80% by midcentury, if not sooner.  That necessitates a serious price for carbon.

What green groups — along with the IPCC, McKinsey, and International Energy Agency — have shown is that the kind of aggressive energy efficiency efforts that Waxman and Obama have been pushing will keep energy bills from rising substantially even as the price of carbon pollution goes up (see “Introduction to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost — one tenth of a penny on the dollar“).  And if you give most of the money raised in the cap-and-trade back to the public — something Obama supports but Shellenberger and Nordhaus strongly oppose, notwithstanding their supposed political savvy — then the vast majority of consumers and taxpayers will actually benefit (see EPA Analysis of Waxman-Markey: “Returning the revenues in [a lump-sum rebate] could make the median household, and those living at lower ends of the income distribution, better off than they would be without the program”).

Shellenberger and Nordhaus then go on to quote the IEA, McKinsey, and Nicholas Stern, bizarrely implying that those 3 believe technology investments can take they place of a carbon price — when that is the exact opposite of the truth.

Before debunking that, let me just say that I have tried to ignore Shellenberger and Nordhaus, even as they ramped up their attacks on the efforts by Obama, Waxman, Gore, and Tom Friedman (and me) to inform the public about the threat of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions and to promote policies that make polluters pay and jumpstart the transition to a clean energy, green jobs economy.  But when the uber-conservative deniers at the Competitive Enterprise Institute started quoting their latest disinformation-filled attacks on Obama and Waxman favorably, and when TBI tried to utterly rewrite history in a display of hypocrisy that must astound even the most jaded and cynical, I drew the line.  Salon asked me to rebut the “Obama’s Climate Suicide Threat,” in a piece that would be twinned with theirs, and I agreed.  I did not see their final version until it was posted.

And no, I don’t think this is a terribly good use of my time and will not be making a habit of it.  But I also don’t think that their disinformation and double talk can simply go unresponded to forever.

Also, I do think it is useful for progressives to know how to rebut the three key big lies that they (and the conservative disinformation campaign) keep pushing:

1. The threat posed by human-cause global warming has been significantly exaggerated.
2. Making carbon polluters pay to emit or regulating greenhouse gas pollution would hurt the economy.
3. The only viable solution to global warming and oil dependence is to eschew a price for carbon and regulations in favor of government spending on breakthrough technologies.

I have already mostly dealt with #2 above.  Let me focus on #3.

Shellenberger claims Waxman and Tom Friedman “keep insisting” to large audiences that “the key to developing clean energy is raising fossil fuel prices — a claim that has been contradicted by large evaluations of the evidence by the International Energy Agency, McKinsey, Stern and others.”

False, false and false.

The entire IEA report, “Energy Technology Perspectives, 2008,” is built around making the case for both technology investment and a high price for fossil fuels. To keep total planetary warming below 2.4°C, as the vast majority of scientists and governments recommend, you must cut global emissions in half by 2050 (IEA’s “BLUE” scenario, 450 ppm atmospheric CO2 concentrations). As its fact sheet states, “emissions halving in BLUE requires options with a cost up to $200/ton.”

The McKinsey report, “The Carbon Productivity Challenge,” concludes that “the world can achieve the 27 gigatons per year of abatement required in 2030 to stay below 500 ppm for a marginal cost” of about $50/ton. It states “there is a growing consensus that a carbon price is fundamental to driving increased carbon productivity.”

The “Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change” concludes, “Establishing a carbon price, through tax, trading or regulation, is an essential foundation for climate-change policy.”

Other than anti-science conservatives and the Breakthrough Institute, I don’t know any independent group who thinks we could possibly stabilize atmospheric concentrations of global warming pollution at safe levels without raising prices for dirty energy.

Waxman and Friedman don’t insist “the key to developing clean energy is raising fossil fuel prices.” They insist that one key strategy for reducing global warming pollution while stimulating innovation and green job creation is making polluters pay for the harm they do.

As I’ve noted, McKinsey and IEA argue that by aggressively pushing energy efficiency, which Waxman and Obama do in their proposed climate legislation, the net cost to taxpayers is about one-tenth of a cent on the dollar. Even better, Obama plans to return most of the money raised by cap-and-trade to the poor and middle class. That means most taxpayers will be not be harmed by the plan — and can actually cut their combined energy and tax bill if they choose.

Conservatives have been demagoguing any carbon price as an energy tax because they believe the global warming threat has been exaggerated and want to defeat efforts by Obama and Congress to take strong action. By repeating their talking points, TBI has rendered itself indistinguishable from those disinformers, like the pigs and the men at the end of Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”

And like them, The Breakthrough Institute doesn’t just oppose a carbon price — it opposes EPA regulations. Shellenberger quotes Institute fellow Roger Pielke Jr. that “Republicans must be drooling over the possibility that EPA will take extensive regulatory action on climate change” because Obama and the Democrats will be blamed for any “actual or perceived downsides.”

Again, besides TBI, the only other major groups who oppose EPA action on climate change — which was essentially mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court (see “EPA finds carbon pollution a serious danger to Americans’ health and welfare requiring regulation“) — are anti-climate conservatives.

In TBI’s world, America would be forbidden from using the only two strategies that have ever successfully reduced pollution levels — making polluters pay and EPA regulations. Somehow, saving humanity from self-destruction is committing political suicide even if there are only “perceived downsides.” Just imagine the pollution we’d be breathing and drinking if they’d been running the EPA all these years.

To TBI, the only viable strategy is to entrust the future of humanity to miraculous breakthrough innovation. Its entire strategy just happens to be identical to the one GOP message guru Frank Luntz invented in his infamous 2002 strategy memo on how conservatives could pretend to care about global warming without actually doing anything: “We need to emphasize how voluntary innovation and experimentation are preferable to bureaucratic or international intervention and regulation.”

This is the road to ruin. The latest science warns that on our current emissions path, we are projected to warm most of the inland United States 10 to 15°F by century’s end, with sea levels 3 to 7 feet higher, rising perhaps an inch or two a year. The Southwest from Kansas to California would be a permanent dust bowl, and much of the ocean a hot, acidic dead zone. If we don’t reverse emissions soon, these impacts could be irreversible for 1,000 years.

The majority of Americans have no idea what the climate science now says we’re facing. Yet enablers like Shellenberger don’t blame the lack of knowledge on the conservative-led disinformation campaign but on the efforts of Al Gore, Tom Friedman, myself and the climate experts who try to tell the public the truth.

Shellenberger could not be more wrong. As James Randerson, an environmental editor and science reporter at the U.K.’s Guardian, recently wrote (see here), “Far from over-playing their hand to swell their research coffers, scientists have been toning down their message in an attempt to avoid public despair and inaction.”

Shellenberger claims that I attribute “the increase in voters telling Gallup that they believe that news of global warming is being exaggerated to the media.” Wrong again. Sure, the media coverage is flawed, as a leading journalist Eric Pooley concluded in a recent Harvard analysis of the 2006 Senate cap-and-trade debate: “The U.S. media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress.” But Pooley is mostly concerned that the media repeats the disinformation from conservative opponents of action. So am I.

In 1998, 23 percent of Democrats agreed “news of global warming is exaggerated.” In 2009, it was 22 percent. In 1998, 34 percent of Republicans agreed with that statement. By 2009, it was 66 percent! The blame for this obviously resides primarily with the disinformers and the conservative media who push the big lie on their GOP audience.

Shellenberger’s writings are now indistinguishable from those of right-wing deniers like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is probably why CEI quotes them both at length in a recent piece, writing, “As Roger Pielke, Jr. and Michael Shellenberger astutely observe …” If it walks like a denier, quacks like a denier and is praised by a denier, we should all just duck.

Shellenberger’s and Nordhaus’s entire analysis attacks a straw man, as they imply the only strategy being pursued is a price for pollution. Most of the Waxman-Markey Bill is an aggressive push on renewable energy and energy efficiency. Moreover, Congress and Obama already jump-started the clean energy and green jobs transition with nearly $100 billion in targeted spending and incentives. And Obama has committed to follow through on his campaign’s energy plan and use $15 billion of the cap and trade revenues for clean tech development and deployment.

The great New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert ended her three-part series “The Climate of Man”:

It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.

Making polluters pay for global warming emissions and having the EPA regulate carbon isn’t political suicide. Failing to do so is just plain suicide. Shellenberger and Nordhaus and Pielke aren’t part of the solution, they are part of the disinformation campaign.