A Way Forward On Climate

What's To Be Done?
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David Roberts presents yet another important Climate Change post.  This time we're treated to an interview with Hal Harvey, the author of a book that busts several myths about stopping carbon accumulation in the atmosphere.

Highlights:

1.  Harvey has developed software, the Energy Policy Simulator, that allows ID-ing the carbon strategies that are most effective.

2.  Importantly, a full 80% of global carbon is produced by a mere 20 nations.  So, worrying about how we’re going to herd over 200 cats is a non-issue.  It’s really all about China, the US, India, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, Japan, Canada, Iran, Mexico, South Korea, the Saudis, South Africa, Australia, the U.K., in that order, and you’re well over three-quarters there. The fact that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., aren’t on the list means this focusing could actually work.

3.  Plus, despite “experts” to the contrary, it isn’t R & D, mainly, that’s necessary in tackling our problem.  Solutions already exist.  What’s needed is implementation, where solutions become cheaper as a learning curve drives down the cost of mass-production.  For example, as energy-storing batteries are deployed, they become cheaper, thanks to not only R & D, but performance standards and economic signaling (hey, these are cheaper!)

4.  Performance standards that legislate a rate of increase (cars will get 4% more efficient every year) are much more effective than those focusing on a target: say a fleet average of 25 mpg by a given date.

5.  If you price carbon without performance standards and R & D, there won’t be much of an effect.  And if the price on carbon doesn’t ratchet up, or doesn’t ratchet up fast enough, the effect is minimal.

6.  A price on carbon doesn’t work on buildings (about 5% of needed reductions).  This is because those who design and build buildings are usually not the people who pay for the energy used in those buildings.  This is why performance standards are needed.

7.  Another example: the price of fuel is only a small part of the price of operating a vehicle.  So, fuel efficiency standards are needed, too.

8.  Carbon sequestration should be the dessert at the end of our meal, not our immediate first step.  This seems counter-intuitive until one realizes that it now actually saves money to switch from coal to solar in some locations.  Why pay money to build a sequestration plant (that sucks carbon out of the air and buries it), when you can save money with solar?  Contrarian Note: the Rodale Institute identifies a long-term sequestration method, regenerative organic agriculture, that if begun sooner, rather than later, and if implemented far-and-wide, could absorb into farmland soils all the extra carbon we currently produce.  It would take many years, though.

Interestingly, the interview mentions a book I’m still reading (on days when digits decline, like today: the 21st of November, or 2-1), Drawdown.  Harvey thinks the ideas in that book (ranking the most likely solutions to climate change, with girls education and family planning being the most effective) are fine and worthwhile.  The problem is that Drawdown is about comparing technologies, not about what is most likely, immediately.