Change the climate narrative
– Nancy Birdsall is the president of the Center for Global Development. Arvind Subramanian is a senior fellow at the Center and at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a regular columnist for the Business Standard, India’s leading business newspaper. The views expressed are their own. –
Efforts to cut emissions of the heat-trapping gases are gridlocked over a misunderstanding about what is fair. This misunderstanding is hindering climate change legislation in Congress and threatens to torpedo international negotiations in Copenhagen next month.
We propose a new way of thinking about climate fairness that focuses not on emissions cuts but on meeting developing countries’ energy needs in a climate-friendly manner. This simple narrative can provide a framework for U.S. legislation and open the way for international collaborative efforts to avert climate catastrophe.
At present, many people in the United States focus on the large and growing emissions of the developing world, especially China, which in absolute terms is now the world’s largest source of greenhouse gases, and India, which is growing fast and like China relies heavily on coal. They argue that it would be unfair to force emissions cuts at home without similar cuts in developing countries. A recent poll found that 60% of Americans believe that in any climate agreement China should cut its emissions the most.
It is true that developing countries already account for roughly half of all greenhouse gas emissions, and that their large populations and rapid economic growth are boosting emissions fast enough to create a planetary crisis by 2050-even if today’s rich countries had never existed.
But meanwhile a quarter of humanity — including millions in China and India — live without any electricity, and one-in-three people on the planet rely on straw, brush, charcoal and animal dung for their cooking needs. The resulting indoor air pollution kills 1.5 million people a year — about 4,000 per day — mostly children. Power for small businesses, irrigation networks, clinics and schools is sorely lacking.
Developing countries point to these unmet energy needs and to large disparities in per capita emissions to argue that the rich world must move first. They note that the 20 tons of CO2 that Americans emit annually is five times the world average, well above both China (5 tons per capita) and India (below 2 tons per capita).
Renewables roll-out needs price guarantees
– John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –
Power generation from renewable sources such as wind turbines, solar cells and biomass plays a small but important part in satisfying total electricity demand around the world, and is growing at an exponential rate thanks to generous public subsidies and government support.
Renewable sources have increased their share of worldwide generation from just 0.4 percent in 1980 and 1.1 percent to 2.3 percent in 2006. In its “World Energy Outlook 2008″, The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects their share will double to 4.9 percent by 2015, and then almost double again to 8.7 percent by 2030. Click here for PDF.
Policymakers are relying heavily on renewable generation to meet projected growth in the electricity demand over the next 20 years while limiting growth in the emission of greenhouse gases.
Unlike reserves of oil and gas, which may be exhausted within the next 70 years, renewables will remain a source of power indefinitely. Much the same could be said of coal, but renewables do not contribute to increased carbon dioxin concentrations in the atmosphere.
But with renewable sources still costing more per kilowatt hour than conventional power from nuclear or fossil fuel plants burning gas and coal, renewables have not yet reached “grid parity” with other power producers and are struggling to penetrate the power market.
Market penetration depends on subsidies, price support and quota schemes mandating power suppliers buy a minimum share of their electricity from renewable. But widespread variations between countries and even within them suggest uptake is sensitive to the form in which support is offered. In particular, guaranteed prices for renewable producers have been more effective than quota systems in encouraging widespread development of wind and solar power.
A small note on ‘renewable’ resources: while the sources of energy are clearly renewable, the materials used in the current methods of recovery are not. Quite frankly, those materials are extremely rare and in VERY short supply as a finite component in the Earth’ crust. Simply closing one’s eyes and hoping that solar and wind power will save the day if only people jumped on the bandwagon is ludicrous because it simply is not possible to build nearly enough solar panels/wind turbines to harness enough energy to meet even 5% of our current needs. And what’s more, these panels/engines don’t last forever – quite the contrary. Average life of a solar panel = 8 years; average life of a wind turbine = 11 years. And, as an added bonus, with all the rare earth’s going to create these renewable harvesters, none is left over to build the batteries in hybrid vehicles or TV screens (and computer screens for that matter.)
It’s great that people are becoming more environmentally aware, and it’s certainly true that using coal to produce electricity takes a horrific toll on the planet, but renewables in their current and next generation form are not the answer. I think people really need to wake up to next generation nuclear generation, with reactors that eat what’s now considered waste and produce only fractional amounts of short-lived waste. And to the opponents of uranium mining , it should also be noted that one coal plant spews more nuclear dust out from the ash waste than all the uranium mines in America combined on a year/year basis. Just something to think about…
Slicing and dicing to gain support for cap-and-trade
– John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –
House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman will this week publish a full text of proposed climate change legislation, including details of a cap-and-trade scheme for regulating and pricing emissions of greenhouse gases.
Press reports suggest the Waxman bill will give away as many as 75 percent of the permits free to power utilities, coal-producers and other industrial users in the first stage of the plan to defuse opposition and buy support from congressional Democrats representing industrial and coal-producing states.
Free allocations would be phased out eventually, but only after a lengthy transition period that could last as long as 10-15 years.
Free allocations will undermine the immediate impact — and demonstrate the depth of opposition — to cap and trade but the real question is whether any transition to full permit auctions is automatic or requires further congressional action.
Commentators have focused on the budgetary implications of giving away permits for free. The president’s own budget plan anticipates revenues of $646 billion from permit auctions over 8 years from fiscal 2012 to fiscal 2019. The White House has already “spent” these revenues on tax breaks for low-income families as well as energy research and development.
Critics allege that giving away permits for free will blow a hole in the budget calculations and lead to even worse deficits over the next decade.
I would say one should really have a great belief in the US political system to even approach it with such an idea as cap and trade. It’s a huge country that have lobbies and interest groups for just about everything in the world. Once the true costs of cap and trade become evident, a huge mess will be produced. The truth is that taxes may be way more effective way to do what the cap and trade intends to achieve, but they go against the deeply ingrained American habit of constantly looking for free lunches. The end result of the cap and trade will be that the taxpayers will end paying more for the program that will achieve much less even though compared to doing nothing the cap and trade is still better.
Casper in order to exercise logic one must first be able to comprehend what they read. I stated CO2 has increased 20 percent. 300 ppm in 1960 to 370 ppm currently. Oxygen on Earth is currently around 19 percent at sea level and steadily decreasing. The higher the elevation, the lower the oxygen. Thinner air. Fifteen or sixteen percent oxygen content are the limits for large mammals generally though not always.You are correct that humanity has burned up the planet and that the time for debate has passed. I am not so sure that the people of my country have the stomach to do what is required.