Climate 411

Claim:

“A cap on America’s global warming pollution is nothing more than a disguised energy tax that will drive up the costs of energy, particularly among the poor.”

— Various opponents of global warming action.

Truth:

Put simply, a cap on global warming pollution is not a tax. In fact, the policy was designed specifically to not be a government run tax, but rather a way to create market incentives to efficiently cut global warming emissions, reward green energy innovation, and rebuild America’s energy infrastructure.

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The distortions and lies from opponents of global warming action are flying fast and furious. Please help us keep up by adding claims you’ve seen as comments to this post.

We’ll review your submissions and try to respond to as many as we can in the main Truth Squad categories.

Submission suggestions:

1. Please send us the exact quote from our opponents with source or link. We’re looking for material that we can directly refute and it helps for us to understand the context in which comments were made.
2. Please keep this focused on claims from opponents of global warming action. There are plenty of other places on the web where we can debate the finer points of climate legislation. We’d like to use this space to focus on the most outrageous claims from those opposed to any real action at all.
3. Please feel free to provide links to video, radio, podcasts, blogs and other forms of online content.

Thanks for your help as we try to document the bogus claims of our climate action opponents.

Claim:

“We utilize energy from carbon not because we are bad people, but because it is the affordable foundation on which profound improvements in our standard of living have been achieved – our health and our welfare.

“I was a physics and chemistry teacher at Nyeri Baptist High School in Kenya, East Africa and witnessed first hand this simple rule – without energy life is brutal and short. World-wide, carbon-based energy demand will grow as Africans and others continue to discover the benefits of technology, medicine, mobility and agriculture and start reaping the benefits of higher standards of living just as we have. Having lived in Africa, I don’t see how one could halt the progress they need and will achieve. In my view, international rules to limit energy production will not halt the expansion of their energy use because of the tremendous benefits provided by energy that the energy-poor crave.”

— John R. Christy, Alabama’s State Climatologist and Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, written testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, February 25, 2009.

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This week, Joe Stiglitz and Nick Stern published an opinion piece in the Financial Times titled “Obama’s Chance to Lead the Green Recovery“. They call for a “stable, strong” price for carbon, but do not say how that price should be set. I just posted a response in the FT‘s Economists’ Forum. Here’s how it begins:

Joe Stiglitz and Nick Stern are exactly right to emphasize the role President Barack Obama can play in leading the green recovery. They are also right to calling for a “stable, strong carbon price.” But it matters how that price is set. In the United States in particular, the right environmental, political and economic answer is a cap-and-trade system.

Take a look at the whole conversation. I also provided some more detail on the greenness of economic stimuli over at the Environmental Economics blog. Spoiler alert: China’s trumps the United States’ package 2:1.

This week, EDF and KKR announced the results of the first year of our green portfolio project.

In just twelve months, the three pilot companies saved:

• $16 million dollars
• 25,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions
• 3,000 tons of paper
• 650 tons of solid waste

I posted a little more about these numbers on our Innovation Exchange blog:

For the past few weeks we’ve been on phone calls and in meetings with project teams from KKR, US Foodservice, PRIMEDIA, and Sealy to review and refine these numbers for today’s announcement.

Since the underlying premise for this project is “you manage what you measure” we had to get these numbers right. We did and the initial results are really impressive. Especially considering that they are adjusted to reflect only those business and environmental benefits that were achieved through improved efficiency from 2007 to 2008, as opposed to changes in volume or sales due to the current economic downturn.

And Julie Stofer, in our communications department, highlighted some of the blog reactions:

• The guys over at Triple Pundit must have had a good chat with our friends at KKR — they were the first to report some details that didn’t make it into the press release, such as the inclusion of Sungard in the next round of implementation, and a projection of the number of companies that will be participating in the program by the end of the year (46).
• The New York Times beat the Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal blog to the punch,  getting a post featuring a pic of Henry Kravis on both Deal Book and Green, Inc. yesterday.
• Marc Gunther called us “a bunch of young and likely underpaid environmentalists.” He agreed with our point that sometimes it just takes “looking at company operations through the fresh lens of sustainability” to achieve benefits that are good for the bottom line and the environment.
• Gwen Ruta, the VP of our partnership program, also chatted with GreenBiz.com about how this project has just “scratched the surface of the efficiencies that can be achieved.”

I think these results demonstrate clearly the benefits that can be achieved through systematic environmental measurement and management, but it’s just the start. With over 1,000 private equity firms in the U.S. and far more portfolio companies, there’s a tremendous opportunity.

Tom Murray is the managing director responsible for the KKR partnership.