False Hope or Hardship? Comments on Pope and McKibben Essays
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February 4, 2009
By Pat Murphy
Executive Director, Community Solutions
Carl Pope, head of the Sierra Club, in a January 22, 2009 article entitled “Moving the U.S. off Carbon with Less Pain, More Gain” takes issue with Bill McKibben’s November 5, 2008 article entitled “President Obama’s Big Climate Challenge.” (Both published in Yale Environment 360, a publication of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies). McKibben identifies the scale and risk of the challenge noting it will be unpopular and could damage Obama’s political future.
Pope begins his critique by acknowledging that he shares McKibben’s conviction that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 90% by mid-century. But Pope argues that the right investment in technology is all that is needed to manage this reduction. The essence of his position is that a well-designed package of market reforms — which does not require austerity — will lead to a prosperous, low-carbon future. He writes, “The assumption that the costs of climate recovery will be prohibitively high simply does not stand up to scrutiny.”
I believe that it is Pope’s positions that do not pass scrutiny and that it matters a great deal whether Pope is correct. Pope himself says there’s a fundamental difference between a mind-set that concludes sacrifice is needed and a mind-set that sees only an economically attractive transition. He labels this as the difference between “sacrifice” and “reform.” Of course, “sacrifice” sounds disconcerting, even scary, while “reform” sounds comforting and moderate. Pope has thus slanted his argument against what he calls sacrifice. By implication, Pope’s position is that no significant lifestyle changes will be required from us.
Pope’s main arguments begin with a reference to a McKinsey & Company report, which says reducing U.S. emissions by 2030 could be achieved with a negative cost, since the need for reductions represents investment opportunities that would increase the productivity of the overall U.S. economy. Pope discusses the case of California, pointing out that in a 35-year period the state’s residents maintained constant per capita energy consumption while the rest of the nation increased 50%. Unfortunately for Pope’s thesis, this period of California’s history is not one of reduction in energy use. Remember that Pope conceded we need a national reduction of around 90% in greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve that reduction, Californians per capita will still need to make reductions on the order of 50 to 60% by 2050 (while the rest of us may need to reach a full 90%). Is Pope suggesting that Californians can make 50 to 60% cuts in their energy use without sacrifice?
Pope next presents a picture of today’s creaky and anachronistic energy system. He says, “Right now, we generate electricity in power plants designed — and in some cases built — in the Taft era (hydro), the Coolidge era (coal), or the Kennedy era (nuclear). We ship electricity in transmission grids equipped with electromechanical switches whose fundamental design goes back 80 years. We burn gasoline in internal combustion engines that haven’t changed much since Henry Ford, and those engines are in SUVs built on 40-year old assembly lines. And 50 percent of the fuel we use to heat and cool our buildings radiates directly into the sky because many of those buildings have never been modernized for energy performance.”
Pope’s portrait is, at best, highly misleading. He does not propose replacing the Taft-era dams with new ones. (And why would he? I suspect their generators have been replaced or rewired many times.) Aging coal plants are not necessarily inefficient. It’s true that coal plants were once less than 20% efficient and now are near 35% (including the latest ones) but there is little room left for improvement in the technology of turning water into steam. Electromechanical switches are not high energy consumers and replacing them with electronic ones will save little fuel. Contrary to Pope’s assertion, the internal combustion engine has in fact improved by about 1.5% per year ever since Henry Ford’s time. (The best-explored alternative, the fuel cell engine, has never made it out of prototype phase.) In short, Pope’s evidence does not support his implied conclusion that there are significant reductions in fossil fuel use to be gained by modernizing the nation’s electricity generation and auto assembly processes.
Pope moves on to endorse a complaint we often hear from business interests, namely that rapid improvement will come to energy markets if we only eliminate barriers to innovation. But what barriers does he have in mind? It isn’t barriers to innovation that explain the snail-like process toward carbon capture, or the recent cancellation of Future Gen in particular – it’s the sheer technical challenge of storing billions of tons of CO2 underground for thousands of years. IGCC power plants on a world-wide basis have not proven themselves reliable and efficient. Improvements in wind and solar technology have come from massive amounts of government subsidies, including major contributions from the government’s own research labs like NREL. Both wind and solar are now growing at 50% per year (still with subsidies) and there has been massive public and private investments in both technologies – but prices remain high, and the sum total of their contribution to the nation’s electricity supply remains under 2%. Pope seems to imagine that shifts in U.S. government policy can mandate rapid technical breakthroughs. But the evidence shows that governments in other nations have subsidized and invested for years without earth-shattering results. Wind power still requires a big propeller and a generator.
Fortunately, Pope does accept that a rapid national transition to a low-carbon economy will not be without some pain and expense. He acknowledges that some parties will not be as better off as others. He admits that there will be a significant price tag to accelerate the transition. But he aims to convince us that this price tag will come from making those who emit carbon pay for their pollution and the costs of climate disruption. Somehow, in his view, taxing the emitters will both accelerate the transition from fossil fuels and make the overall global economy fairer. But he ignores the basic fact that the emitters of carbon are us! It’s not the Ford or General Motors plants that are the problem, it’s the trucks and SUVs that we Americans have chosen to drive and the big houses we have chosen to inhabit. Does Pope believe that we will call a significant new tax on personal carbon emissions a “reform” rather than a “sacrifice”?
Pope says he agrees with McKibben when the latter says, “Doing what actually needs to be done . . . would involve — directly or indirectly — raising the cost of continuing to live as we do right now.” But then he focuses on the wastefulness of people who drive Hummers, or air condition rooms that have fires blazing in the fireplace. (This is a miniscule part of the population) He acknowledges how much “energy waste happens because ordinary people live in leaky buildings with outdated appliances” but doesn’t recognize the sacrifice implied when he also concedes that such people “cannot easily or affordably upgrade.” He expresses sympathy for small business people buying a Ford Econoline with an old design that gets 15 mpg, but then wonders why they don’t drive modern hybrid panel trucks that get 30 mpg. (He criticizes Detroit for not offering such a vehicle; but I doubt any global manufacturer offers one.) Pope seems to conclude it is Detroit’s fault for not offering better vehicles, while completely ignoring the choice of tens of millions of Americans to drive SUVs when more efficient cars are available. This familiar environmentalist refrain – blame the producer but not the consumer – serves to obscure the financial hit (another sacrifice, perhaps?) that millions of owners of low-mileage vehicles are now bound to take.
Pope claims to share McKibben’s despair over U.S. materialism but insists that austerity for the American people will not be required. He hypothesizes two schools of thought on this issue. One school suggests modest carbon reduction goals to mitigate economic pain or the give-away of carbon permits to businesses. The other school compensates those who use carbon sinks. He notes in this case that Peabody Coal does not own the Amazon, nor Exxon-Mobil the Maldive Islands, but the corporations use the Amazon and Indian Ocean to absorb their emissions at huge cost to others. Who are these “others”? I assume Pope means me and all the other citizens – citizens, that is, who use electricity from Peabody Coal and drive vehicles fueled with Exxon oil. Once more, in Pope’s version of the story, the responsibilities of citizens are not called into question – oil companies are the sole evil-doers.
Pope goes on to compare his views on revenues from carbon permits with those of McKibben, and finds the latter’s lacking. Pope wants to use the revenue from carbon permits to aggressively pursue better technologies. He argues for investing in energy efficiency rather than new power plants. He believes that serious energy market reform and regulation of the producer can rapidly reduce the demand for fossil fuels of the consumer by putting a price on carbon emissions. Pope then calculates that a carbon price of around $30 per ton can be funded by a gasoline tax of approximately 30 cents per gallon. Revenues would go to the U.S. Treasury, and Congress would allocate them first to low-income consumers to mitigate the increased costs of gasoline and electricity, and second to investments in climate change solutions with a focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy. Finally, he wants building codes to reflect the American Institute of Architects’ goals of achieving carbon-neutral buildings by 2030 (new construction only), ignoring the 100s of millions of existing inefficient buildings.
Pope proposes incentives including upping the price of carbon generated to send a more powerful signal to investors to back low-carbon alternatives if progress is slow. Other incentives would return some carbon taxes to the citizens to allow them to buy more efficient products. About $60 billion to $180 billion a year would go to the government to meet the various costs of transitioning to a low-carbon economy. Pope acknowledges that he does not know how fast we can improve the energy productivity and lower the carbon/energy ratio of our economy. One might suspect that he also doesn’t know how much it would cost. He argues for redirecting benefits from the polluting and uncompetitive technologies of the past to cleaner, higher performance, new energy options. Finally he says the level of sacrifice we face will fall in direct proportion to how effectively we use carbon revenues to motivate and deliver the new energy options. However, he provides no analysis or estimates of time and costs to achieve reductions – seemingly just hoping the technology is there somewhere.
What Pope does not see is that by taking the positions discussed above, he has not refuted McKibben’s call for sacrifice. Americans are perfectly free to purchase new energy-saving products and technologies right now, but would have to sacrifice some other purchase to do so. There are triple-paned argon-filled windows on the market, for example, which would reduce home heating costs. But they are expensive enough that many would call buying them a “sacrifice.” Gas-saving cars using advanced technology have been available now for a decade. But hybrid sales are still less than 2% of the market. High-mileage Honda Fits and Toyota Yarises are available for those who can’t afford a hybrid – granted these models require sacrifices of size and comfort compared to SUVs. Americans can buy a host of energy efficient products today — assuming they are willing to give up comfort, convenience, and cash. Their cars might be a bit more crowded and might not be as safe. Americans can buy more energy-efficient houses – if they are willing to put more of the construction cost into a better building envelope, and sacrifice larger rooms. Utility bills can be lowered by settling for smaller appliances or turning off the extras in the garage. Compact fluorescent bulbs can be installed immediately, though few Americans have actually done even this. Americans have consistently rejected energy-saving technologies for the sake of style, one-upmanship, comfort and convenience.
In my view, Bill McKibben said something important and accurate when he pointed out that if Americans are to achieve the ecologically necessary reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, they will need to sacrifice many things – and not just those which are considered to be luxuries. Carl Pope, by contrast, suggests that we will not need to give up anything. Technology and innovation, spurred by simple changes in government policy, will provide us a 60 mpg 4,000 pound SUV and a 3,000 square foot McMansion that will use less energy than an electric bike and a modest apartment.
Mr. Pope’s paper came out at roughly the same time as the January/February issue of Sierra magazine. The cover of that magazine included a figure painting a cartoon house green. (Yes, the term “green-wash” came to mind.) On page 12 of the magazine, the columnist “Mr. Green” responded to a woman in Dayton, Ohio inquiring about the cost-effectiveness of solar panels on her home. Mr. Green responds that installing a solar energy system to generate power for the average household costs roughly $80,000 after rebates and tax credits. Will this woman be able to add panels without sacrifice? I think not – Americans have no such deep pockets to make these changes.
A second article in the magazine entitled “Emerald Cities” suggests in an upbeat manner that major changes are happening in urban areas and refers to LEED building standards, product of the U.S. Green Building Council which has certified only two thousand of the nation’s 5 million commercial buildings. And LEED buildings at best reduce energy use by only 25%. He does not seem to know that the so-called “green” LEED standards and Energy Star appliance ratings have saved only a few percent of the energy consumed in buildings — after pushing their brands for over a decade. And what about the 100,000,000 existing homes? How much will they cost to retrofit and can Americans do this while maintaining their current life style? I think not.
Bill McKibben’s essay, by contrast with Pope’s critique, is grounded in a realistic sense of the difficulties we face. It will be long and hard to gain significant efficiency for a new infrastructure when so called “green” buildings and cars offer on average no more than a 15% improvement in efficiency. Making the existing infrastructure energy efficient involves change of an almost unimaginable scale. This will not be achieved without massive sacrifice from Americans, voluntary or involuntary. The idea that investment in technology is all that is needed is naïve and dangerous. The crisis is huge and Winston Churchill’s comments come to mind as he readied England for a long war: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind.” There was a war on then – and there is no less a war on now as we battle the U.S. materialism over which Pope says he shares McKibben’s despair.
Pole calls for a new environmentalism. And McKibben and millions of others, including myself, share this sentiment. But a new environmentalism based on the market economy and the now discredited thesis that greed is good is essentially no environmentalism at all. Environmentalists who claim there will be no need for sacrifice, and reject Churchill’s call, are part of the problem, not the solution.
The Risks of Plan B
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By Rob Content
Program Manager, Community Solutions
The details are still under intense discussion in Democratic Party power centers like Chicago and New York. But there is good reason to expect that within the coming weeks and months the Obama administration will announce a broad set of policy initiatives, likely including a heavy dose of executive orders. These policies will be designed first and foremost to address the deepening economic collapse by reassuring bankers, autoworkers, and road crews across the United States that they will still have work-sites to go to. Many of the jobs the government will try to save will involve energy and transportation, such as the construction and maintenance of today’s low-mileage car models, and the repair of roads and bridges on which fleets of commercial trucks deliver consumer goods to retail shelves.
Efforts such as these can be seen as attempts to extend business as usual, or “Plan A.” Plan A, to which the Bush-Cheney administration closely hewed, consists of encouraging the fossil fuel industry to extend its traditional dominance of the nation’s energy supply operations. This includes mining and drilling, refining and transporting, and, more generally, defining and shaping public understanding of where electricity, transport and heating fuels, and fertilizers and pesticides/herbicides all come from. Plan A may have suffered a bit of a dirty face the last eight years at the hands of the Iraq War, expanded public concern over global warming, and spikes in prices at the pump and in utility bills. Nevertheless, it remains hugely profitable, deeply entrenched in the nation’s infrastructure, and responsible for supplying the lion’s share of the energy on which the consumer/commuter’s daily lifestyle utterly depends.
But the Obama administration’s policies on energy and the environment are also likely to include some key elements that differ significantly from those of the departing Bush administration. As such, they will deserve to be recognized as the opening stage of a distinct “Plan B.” Current indications are that we will see pages borrowed from Jimmy Carter’s conservation playbook – surely a good thing, and one to be welcomed by most in the peak oil and climate change community. Also likely to win general endorsement would be an effort to publicize and extend the “greener cities” approach spearheaded by Richard M. Daley in Chicago. And many among us will likewise be pleased to see a more prominent place at the table for the wind and solar industries.
Unlike Plan A, Plan B will emphasize waste reduction, the development of alternative energy sources (especially renewable ones), and investment in higher efficiency technological innovations. We should not underestimate the space still available for Plan B to be fully explored, and then deeply embraced, by American consumers. Acceptance of the hybrid car has been steady but also slow; nearly a decade passed before the first million vehicles were on the roads. By and large, Americans still “want” gas-guzzlers – even if many breadwinners can no longer find the credit to purchase them or always afford to fill their gas tanks. Our home insulation efforts lag behind our generally low awareness of their affordable benefits. Only a tiny fraction of Americans purchase carbon-offsets for their airplane trips or electricity consumption. The experience of long-distance travel by air or car, for business or for pleasure, remains a fixture of “the good life,” one to which many are eager to return just as soon as the government delivers its solutions to our current problems. For these reasons (and many more), a shift in our national discussion of energy issues in which Plan B finds its voice alongside Plan A should probably be acknowledged as a profound – even perhaps a revolutionary – change.
And there’s the rub.
For many in the Peak Oil community – and certainly for us at Community Solutions – the success of Plan B is a long shot. Any administration, however well-advised and civic-minded, that commits itself and our remaining resources to Plan B is gambling. The success of Plan B depends upon a series of technological breakthroughs which in turn will depend upon the availability of massive financial resources to sustain technological research over at least several decades; even more massive resources would then be required to implement the results. Committing so much to such an uncertain approach indicates to us a limited understanding of how dire our energy predicament has already become.
Those of us who see the brightest prospects for a secure and sustainable culture in widespread voluntary curtailment of energy consumption – what we call “Plan C” – therefore harbor a set of serious reservations about Plan B. We begin with mixed feelings at best about fresh infusions of research funds for carbon capture and sequestration, so-called “advanced” bio-fuels, and carbon nuclear fusion. We are concerned that political speeches and policy goals contain so few acknowledgements that these unproven technologies may in fact turn out to be unprovable. In addition, we will find it hard to swallow endorsements by the new Administration of such pale green approaches as LEED standard building construction, intensive new public subway or trolley developments, and “green” consumerism. (Our Executive Director Pat Murphy has also now developed a highly critical evaluation of the pluggable hybrid car – which, as he argues, should more credibly be called “the coal car” since its batteries would be recharged with electricity generated mostly by coal-burning power plants.)
At Community Solutions, we therefore advocate instead a set of much deeper green approaches. (We have discussed labeling them “red” to signal our sense of urgency.) We support Passive House building construction standards – particularly as they may be used to retrofit existing homes, a Smart Jitney approach to mass ride-sharing using the existing vehicle fleet, and a significant curtailment of the consumer economy in favor of a simpler, healthier, non-affluent style of life. What the elements of Plan C have in common – and so what distinguishes them from the bulk of Plan B approaches – is that they require no technological breakthroughs, can be implemented starting immediately, and would be far less time and resource-intensive to complete.
No doubt others involved in Peak Oil discussions would change a point here or there in their own assessment of Plan C’s advantages over Plan B. Strenuous disagreement over certain points would expected and respected as well. But my aim here is to draw attention to a larger dynamic – and the potential consequences of failing to understand that dynamic in advance.
The dynamic is this: An energy transition from Bush’s Plan A to Obama’s Plan B is likely to be felt as a major and decisive shift in U.S. national consciousness, as well as in policy detail. This shift of plans may be as wrenching and controversial a change in national character as has been achieved since the gradual awakenings of the civil rights era. It should be no surprise that a shift of this magnitude would contain some risk of failure, and the possibility that Plan B might fail therefore merits open and serious discussion. We should be talking about whether Plan B is really a risk worth taking – and even if so, whether some investment should simultaneously be made in the low-risk, high-reward Plan C.
As a contribution to this discussion, we suggest a challenge to policy planners in the new administration: Invite the public to articulate its greatest concerns about how and why Plan B might fail. We believe there will be many concerns along these lines. Our own top three are the following:
• The scale of financial investment in the electrical grid, as well as the power plant infrastructure, that would be required to meet national energy needs through wind and solar generation (and the fossil fuel supply required to back them up during periods of intermittency).
• The time-scale to replace 100%, or even 50%, of the electricity supplied by today’s conventional coal-burning plants with electricity generated from alternative energy sources, either nuclear or renewable.
• The additional demand on the national electricity supply if 20 million Americans, or even 10 million, purchase cars that are recharged by plugging in to the grid (and so at best achieve carbon dioxide emission reductions no better than those of today’s non-pluggable hybrids).
As the Inauguration of Barack Obama approaches, we find ourselves waiting, like many of our fellow citizens, to see what a charismatic, talented, and credentialed new generation of leaders will offer us. And we find ourselves concerned that they will come up short. Any version of Plan B based upon the core elements outlined above will be in our estimation too little, too late.
The new President’s program on energy and the environment will also be, on deeper analysis, his approach to the declining availability of fossil fuels and to global climate change. As such, it will represent our nation’s best chance to address these fundamental challenges at their roots. Should this opportunity be missed, we will all experience the consequences of further delay in making the deep changes that are required – the kind of realistic, practical changes that characterize Plan C.