Climate 411

Climate Change Hitting Home: Galveston and Houston Residents On Notice

By Laura Williamson / Published: June 9, 2009

This post is by Amy Hardberger, an attorney with EDF’s Texas Office’s Climate/Air and Water programs.

Hurricane Ike storm surge, by Flickr user eh3k Hurricane Ike storm surge hits Jetty East, by Flickr user eh3k.

For some, it’s hard to care about global warming because its impacts on everyday life aren’t obvious. It’s too abstract. It’s not tangible. It’s too wonky. It’s just not real enough.

Well, what if you learned that global warming could literally push you out of your home? Is that real enough for you?

Texas cities Houston and Galveston just got a wake-up call – conservative estimates of sea level rise due to climate change will displace 78 percent of households over the next 100 years in Galveston County alone, according to a new study that EDF and the British Consulate-General commissioned from the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M Corpus Christi.

And that’s the conservative estimate. In a business-as-usual scenario, Galveston-area sea levels could rise as much as 1.5 meters in the next 100 years, which could displace more than 100,000 households and create more than $12 billion in infrastructure losses for Houston and Galveston. Rising sea levels will also damage at least 23 public facilities, industrial sites and water treatments plants, begging many questions about where to move or how to protect these sites. (See a related post on sea level rise.)

For cities like Galveston, which is still rebuilding from Hurricane Ike, these findings reinforce the notion that planning for how to adapt to climate changes or mitigate their effects is critical. Current discussions have centered around building a large, expensive and likely ineffective “Ike Dike” to protect the city from future storm surges, though there are likely more realistic adaptation measures that will make people safer quicker. Passing federal climate legislation and ramping up local municipal energy efficiency are surely the most effective ways to begin reducing the rate of sea level rise.

So, for all of you out there who don’t think global warming could happen to you, take a hard look at the harsh reality that these coastal communities face.

Posted in Extreme Weather / Tagged climate change, Galveston, global warming, Houston, Hurricane Ike, Ike Dike, Texas | Comments are closed

Let’s Just Give Up

By Tom Olson / Published: June 2, 2009

That, in a nutshell, is Jim Manzi’s prescription for climate change (see the June 8 National Review). It’s a really, really bad one.

I’ll limit myself to three key points here, though there is much more to say about why Mr. Manzi is mistaken.

1. The damage from climate change in the United States is likely to be very large, and very bad. And it is coming soon.

Mr. Manzi may not have had the chance to take a look at the work done by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a major scientific effort by prominent research scientists from around the country, coordinated by scientists at federal agencies.

One thing this project has done is to look hard, using the best available scientific tools, at the specific impacts of climate change in the United States. The final draft report on that topic came out in early January 2009. That is, it came out during the George W. Bush Administration, with the approval of President Bush’s appointees across the federal government. It’s called Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. You can see the draft here. (The final version should be out soon.)

It’s worth a close look. (The graphics are spectacular.) And it tells nothing like the Pollyanna-ish story that Mr. Manzi — a very successful entrepreneur, and obviously a smart person, but not a scientist — tells in his piece.

Just a few highlights of what we can expect during this century from the what-we-worry course that Mr. Manzi prefers:

By the period 2080-2099, devastating heat waves of the kind that killed more than 700 people in Chicago in 1995 will occur three times per year.
During that same period, the climate of Michigan will become like that of North Texas today. Illinois will become like South Texas.
Florida will become stunningly and unrelentingly hot: “By the end of the century, projections indicate that North Florida will have more than 165 days (nearly six months) per year over 90˚F, up from roughly 60 days in the 1960s and 1970s.”
The Great Lakes are likely to lose up to two feet in depth by 2070, with devastating effects on shipping: “up to 240 tons of capacity [per large ship] for each inch of draft lost.”
“The combined effects of natural climate variability and human-induced climate change could turn out to be a devastating ‘one-two punch’ for the [Southwest] region.”

There is much more. I urge you, and Mr. Manzi, to read the CCSP report to see for yourself.

The 2080’s may sound like a long time away to Mr. Manzi, but they don’t to me: odds are my grandkids, and I hope my kids, will be alive to see the world we’ve left them.

2. However much we spend on government research, private firms will have no incentive to reduce their greenhouse gas pollution if it continues to be free to dump it into the atmosphere.

Curiously, Mr. Manzi does not credit the so-called “Breakthough Institute” for his proposal to solve the climate problem exclusively through government-funded research. But his advocacy suffers from the same fundamental problem as theirs: if a firm can emit pollution without paying any price for doing so, it has no incentive to spend money on cutting its pollution – whether using government-developed technology or otherwise.

It is truly surprising to see a prominent National Review columnist so strongly opposing use of the most basic of all free-market economic tools — markets and prices, which a cap would create — in favor of a hypothetical, future, government-funded, Buck Rogers fix. (Mr. Manzi’s philosophy is popularly known as “pay-and-pray.”)

Consider one (important) practical example. Suppose the government devotes vast resources to developing new and better ways to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by coal-burning power plants and burying it underground. (This is called “carbon capture and storage” in the business.) However advanced this technology may be, it will cost money. Why would Duke Power, AEP, or any other utility spend a penny on this technology if they can simply dump their pollution into the air for free?

Every undergrad who takes Econ 101 learns it’s bad if firms can impose their costs on other people – that is, externalize them. Starting with the Clean Air Act in 1970, we’ve insisted that companies internalize the costs of other types of pollution — like mercury, sulfur dioxide, and dioxin. But, in violation of the most basic rules of economics, we have yet to insist that firms internalize the costs of their global warming pollution. That’s what cap-and-trade — and the Waxman-Markey bill — does. It’s the right thing to do to protect us from the climate misery that the scientists tell us we are rushing towards if we continue, as Mr. Manzi urges, to do nothing.

3. Mr. Manzi’s projections of costs are far off base.

Lots of serious economists have looked at the economic impact of putting a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions. And the consensus is that, at worst, it will have a very small impact on incomes and on GDP. I say “at worst” because no one knows how to model the ways in which necessity (a price on carbon) begets invention, and thus lower costs.

The EPA’s analysis of the current (Waxman-Markey) bill is consistent with this consensus: the Agency estimates that the bill is likely to cost households between $98 and $140 a year – less than a postage stamp a day.

Mr. Manzi says he can’t believe that. But the EPA’s analysis relied on two of the most respected and sophisticated economic models available. It is simply absurd for Manzi to baldly pronounce that “he doesn’t believe the numbers,” as if he were competent to judge what economic estimates are credible or not.

In any event, there’s plenty of logic behind the EPA analysis, including the fact that there are huge opportunities to live the same lifestyle we live now, while using much less energy.

Here’s a homely example: the office building in which my organization rents space in Washington, D.C. is heated by an archaic, inefficient boiler that operates at about 60% efficiency. Much more efficient boilers are available – boilers that save so much energy that they have payback periods of only a few years. (And there are American jobs at every stage of replacing this dinosaur, from mining to manufacturing to installation.)

The respected consulting firm McKinsey & Co. did a big study showing there are similar opportunities throughout the economy. With a little incentive from energy prices that internalize pollution costs, doing these sensible things becomes an easy lift.

There will always be voices telling us it’s too much trouble to control pollution – pieces like Mr. Manzi’s were commonplace before we cracked down on conventional pollutants in 1970, and before President George H.W. Bush used cap-and-trade to attack acid rain (very successfully) starting in 1990.

It would be a ghastly mistake to heed them.

Posted in Economics / Read 2 Responses

First Shot Fizzles in the “Economic War on the Midwest”

By Sharyn Stein / Published: June 2, 2009

Indiana Representative Mike Pence famously called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 an example of the East and West Coasts “declaring economic war on the Midwest.”

So you’d think that now that the bill has passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Americans in the heartland would be up in arms. But…not so much.

In fact, some of the largest and most respected media outlets in the Midwest and other traditional coal and oil states are accepting of the bill, even happy with it. Here are a few highlights from the last week:

“Gov. Mitch Daniels and U.S. Reps. Mike Pence and Steve Buyer have some significant non-allies in their vehement opposition to the carbon reduction legislation now moving through Congress. Among them are most of the Midwest’s governors, who already have signed a regional cap-and-trade agreement; and Indiana’s largest electric utility, whose boss accepts the need for congressional action and insists it will benefit rather than punish this coal-dependent region — if the region’s leadership pulls up to the table.”
— Indianapolis Star editorial, May 28, 2009

“Each generation is asked to generate new ideas that will make our nation a world leader. Clean energy could be our next big discovery…Our nation can stick with the status quo and continue to fall prey to $4-a-gallon gas – the straw that broke the economy’s back – and environmental disasters such as the Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant spill, or change directions and move toward cleaner energy.”
— Daily News Journal (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) editorial, May 28, 2009

“Climate change imposes very real costs on all of us, on our children and on our grandchildren. We are subsidizing current energy prices at the expense of our progeny. The longer we defer payment, the higher those costs will be … It’s as if we are financing our lifestyle with an interest-only mortgage. There’s a big balloon payment looming in our future, but we’ve refused to set anything aside to pay it … the cap-and-trade bill represents an important advance because it has a realistic chance of being approved. If we do not start reducing our global warming liabilities now, we will be overwhelmed with the debt later.”
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial, May 28, 2009

“The American Clean Energy and Security Act unveiled this week is not perfect, but it’s a smart step toward reducing carbon emissions without destroying American industry and jobs … The Waxman-Markey bill is a plan the Congress should accept.”
— Bristol (Tenn.) Herald-Courier editorial, May 22, 2009
“While the do-nothing crowd stews on the sidelines, those committed to doing something about climate change are fully engaged … it’s not just tree-hugging environmentalists. It’s not just Democrats. It’s not just climatologists. It’s leaders of many stripes answering the call on the biggest issue facing our planet … Texas being the nation’s petrochemical capital, it can’t sit on the sidelines when guidelines are written.”
— Waco Tribune-Herald editorial, May 22, 2009
“If done properly, cap and trade would be a responsible compromise as the federal government attacks the problem of global warming. Obama and the Democratic leadership must stand firm during debate on the cap and trade policy. The final bill ought to contain strict, fair rules on who should pay to reduce greenhouse gases and how much it could cost.”
— Kansas City Star editorial, May 20, 2009

Posted in Partners for Change, What Others are Saying / Comments are closed

Opportunity: Reduce emissions of the overlooked accomplices of CO2

By James Wang / Published: May 29, 2009

The global warming culprit we hear the most about is carbon dioxide (CO₂), but human activity produces a host of other, shorter-lived pollutants that act as “partners in crime” in contributing to climate change.

Until recently, most of the attention paid to these pollutants has centered around their detrimental effects on air quality and human health – the pollutants include fine particles such as black carbon and gases that form smog.

But because these pollutants disappear from the atmosphere relatively quickly, they also give us an important opportunity to put the brakes on the rapid rise in global temperature. If people around the world can reduce the amounts that they emit, everyone will see an immediate benefit and help avoid dangerous tipping points in the climate system over the next few decades.

My colleagues Nadine Unger and Drew Shindell at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and I just published a paper in the journal Atmospheric Environment that offers additional insight into the climatic role of these pollutants. Our findings come at a time when activity on domestic and international climate policy in general and on black carbon policy in particular is ramping up.

For this paper, we delved into emissions from two key sectors, transportation and power generation, for the U.S. and the world. We primarily used a global climate model developed at NASA GISS that simulates the transport of pollutants by wind and the chemical and physical reactions that transform the pollutants into smog and particles. The model also calculates the warming or cooling effect of the different pollutants.

One of our important findings is that transportation is a particularly good sector to target quickly for emissions controls because it produces a lot of black carbon (think: diesel exhaust) and ozone-producing gases, in addition to CO₂. In contrast, emissions cuts in the power generation sector do not offer the same short-term opportunity. That sector emits little black carbon, but it does create much sulfate particle pollution. Sulfate particles are bad for air quality and acid rain, but in the short term actually counteract the warming effects of CO₂emissions. Of course, it is essential to clean up the power sector to address long-term climate damage from CO₂, as well as health problems from sulfate particles, ozone smog and other pollutants. But short-term opportunities to slow global warming are more significant in the transportation sector.

We also considered a hypothetical example of switching the transportation sector to a zero-emissions or electric power source, such as in plug-in hybrid electric or pure electric technologies.The result: A hefty benefit for the climate.

The switch to a zero-emissions or electric power source would decrease the warming effect if you just consider CO₂emissions. (Though increased CO₂ emissions from the electricity generation sector would offset the decrease in direct emissions from vehicles to a certain extent.)

But reducing the non-CO₂ pollutants provides even more benefit for the climate. Zero-emission or electric transportation would greatly reduce black carbon emissions. The short-term benefits to be gained from focus on the transportation sector are important for policymakers to note.

Last week’s announcement by President Obama on national greenhouse gas emissions standards for passenger cars and light trucks is a significant step in this direction. Further action is needed to clean up the exhaust from existing heavy-duty trucks and other diesel-powered transport, both in this country and internationally.

Unger and her colleagues are working to expand the published analysis to include a full suite of economic sectors, including industry, non-road transport and agriculture, and additional greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.

Look for another paper in the near future.

Posted in Cars and Pollution, Science / Read 2 Responses

Enron Invented Cap and Trade

By Heather Shelby / Published: May 29, 2009

Claim:

“Christopher C. Horner, author of the book ‘Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed’ noted that it was Enron that invented the concept of cap and trade and then profited off it until it collapsed in disgrace. He said that Waxman-Markey would bring about ‘Soviet-style planning.'”
— From “Hoosier GOP Sound Alarm Over Cap & Trade” by Brian A. Howey, editor of the Howey Politics Indiana blog, May 27, 2009.

Truth:

Let’s set aside the fact that Christopher Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has received more than $2 million in funding over the last decade from ExxonMobil, arguably the number one corporate opponent of any climate action over the last 20 years.
Let’s also set aside the fact that Christopher Horner is also counsel to the Cooler Heads Coalition, a global warming skeptics group that exists for the express purpose of questioning global warming science and blocking climate action.
Let’s deal with the claim straight up.
Enron did not invent cap and trade. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
For one thing, Enron didn’t exist until the late 1980s after the merger of InterNorth and Houston Natural Gas. By that time, the concept of cap and trade as a policy to cut pollution had been debated for more than a decade.
Cap and trade was later codified in U.S. law in the 1990 Clean Air Act to reduce America’s acid rain pollution. The Economist crowned the acid rain cap and trade policy “probably the greatest green success story of the past decade.” (July 6, 2002).
EDF played a leading role in promoting the acid rain pollution cap, and take it from us Enron played no role in the debate what-so-ever.
As for “Soviet-style planning” – the dictionary defines HYPERBOLE as an “obvious and intentional exaggeration.” Perhaps we should amend it to include Mr. Horner’s statement.
Mr. Horner either doesn’t know what he’s talking about or is dissembling. Far from a command and control program, cap and trade is a market-based policy designed to unleash investments in the clean energy economy. By definition, it is the opposite of letting the government pick winners and losers.
In fact, the first President Bush — not exactly a promoter of Soviet style economics — signed the 1990 cap and trade law because it was a centrist, efficient way to effectively cut pollution. And it still is.
There is much to debate when it comes to how to solve global warming. We welcome Mr. Horner to the debate, but would urge him to do his homework and get his facts straight.

Posted in News / Comments are closed

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