James Hansen, a top NASA scientist who helped bring attention to the dangers of global warming more than 20 years ago, wants Copenhagen to fail.
That’s right, and from the dude who is like the godfather of climate change science.
His major complaint seems to be that the Danish plan reduces emissions over 40 years, which he says is too long, and we will be in a disaster by then. I tend to agree. However, we will also need to recover from that disaster, and having a long term cut in CO2 emissions will also be part of that solution, in real or in spirit. Let me explain.
James is saying that any cap and trade type ETS, won’t work fast enough and that a straight energy tax is what is required immediately. If I ran the show worldwide, I would agree with him, do that immediately, and stifle all debate as strong as required to maintain my control on power. And believe me, you’d have a shit fight on your hands, taking on all business that use energy worldwide, and the energy intense ones most of all. But I would do it, because I believe fundamentally that James is right, and we are either at or just past the point where we must act to stop anthropogenic climate change. However, I am not ready to go join the rapturists, and unless we find a way to reduce emissions soon, and possibly reverse feedforward loops in climate change, we might not be ok long term, like as a species.
Assuming we have not passed the point of no return with regard to overall average warming, then the major advanced economies (in terms of lower energy intensity, or $/GDP, but high overall emissions) are going to have to cap our emissions and reduce them over time. No question about it. And as they do that, industries in those countries will have to either directly reduce their emissions themselves, or get someone else to do for them, through the only flexible compliance method specifically identified in the Kyoto Agreement, an ETS. They are proven to work, use economic drivers and markets for efficiency, and can be on the whole fair and egalitarian (just as Wall Street can be).
So I hope Copenhagen succeeds, although I don’t like the track record of the politicians anymore than James does. Copenhagen would be a real coup if we could also get some countries to sign up to firm commitments on the real issue, so we can quit worrying about how much CO2 we put out in total.
See, while the spirit of the long-term solution will retain emissions reduction, the functional design of it should be an energy intensity tax (or a mix of energy intensity limits for equipment, facilities, industries, etc.), much like vehicle efficiency standards, which improved the fleet so much in the USA beginning in 1978. Pity they didn’t keep that up. So, what we really need long term is for everyone in the advanced and the developing world to sign up to energy intensity targets. Otherwise they will continue to install more high-CO2 emitting, low energy efficiency crap, like they are doing now. It may surprise you to know that coal fired electricity production not only has the largest installed base (50% of production) but that it is also the fastest growing rate of new plants that are being installed (primarily in China, Russia, India). So, as James is saying, we better get cracking on that, or we will also be in need of a zombie plan even if the big emitters now all achieve fantastic reductions in CO2 emissions.