Bunzl's Blog

The blog is changing!

2010-06-07T18:29:00.000-04:00

After 128 posts on varied topics, I am shifting the focus of this blog to be more relentlessly philosophical. Over the next year, I am going to be posting less often but in larger slugs, as I write in five areas:
1. Risk: What is the importance of the psychology of risk perception at the individual level in understanding our attitudes toward risk? What are the differences between how we assess collective risk as opposed to individual risk? How should we analyze extreme risk?
2. Social Choice: How does the Tragedy of the Commons mislead us in thinking about collective action to stem climate change? What can we learn from international public health models about how to turn the free rider problem to our advantage?
3. Rights: Can our theories of ethics coherently grant moral standing to both future generations and Nature?
4. Psychology: How important are beliefs in the determination of behavior and attitudes in the determination of acquiescence to government policy? What prompts change on either account and how is it best measured?
5. Fairness: How important is it to argue for doing the right thing, if there is a better chance of getting others to do the second best thing? How important is historic responsibility in assessing fairness going forward? How important in intranational equity as opposed to international equity going forward?

A coalition of the willing?

2010-05-31T00:33:00.001-04:00

Despairing of coordinated international action a la Copenhagen, Thomas Hale and Scott Moore call for those who are ready, to simply move - be they governments, sub-national states, corporations or even individuals. (See Chinadialogue .)It is an engaging idea because it appeals to the frustration of the willing not wanting to be held hostage to the unwilling. I am all for unilateral action, but only if it creates conditions to win over the unwilling. Otherwise, such actions have no chance of making a dent in the problem of greenhouse gas output. Meaningful voluntary action will only work if big players act unilaterally, and that is what makes the need for U.S. climate legislation so important. If the United States joins Europe in enacting serious legislation, they remove the risk to others who may fear that if they were to act unilaterally they would lose a competitive advantage. Moreover, action by the United States and Europe to impose import tariffs, on those who do not join them, could create a stick that goes along with the carrot. Whether such a stick could be wielded without starting a trade war remains an unresolved issue in this scenario.

Smoking and Seat Belts

2010-05-24T13:43:00.002-04:00

I used to smoke and I enjoyed doing so very much. I gave up because my doctor told me it might kill me. ‘Might’ was enough to convince me that the pleasure did not outweigh the risks. For all I know it may turn out that his warnings were misplaced. Maybe the correlation between smoking and disease will turn out to be spurious. The result of a common cause. But the uncertainty gets swamped out by the costs of being right. The cost of death to me is high. High enough that even if there is only a small chance of my doctor being right, I want to avoid it. And the cost of avoiding it, foregoing the pleasure, pales in comparison to that: s < p.d That is to say, the forgone pleasure of smoking (s) is less than (<) the probability of smoking causing my death (p) time (.) the cost of my death (d). I used not to wear seat belts. I found them too much of a bother to fuss with and I disliked the way the chafed on my shoulder. I started wearing them because of published data about the superior survival rates of those wearing seat belts in crashes. The data was enough to convince me to put up with the bother of wearing seat belts even though I was not sure of their reliability. For all I know, those who wear seat belts are more cautious that those who don’t. So here too the correlation might be spurious. But here to the cost of death is high and swamps out such considerations. s < p.d where now ‘s’ stands for the foregone convenience of not wearing seat belts. As things go with smoking and seat belts, why do they not also go when it comes to climate change? Here ‘s’ is the cost of significantly reducing greenhouse gas output. ‘p’ is the probability of climate change caused by such output and ‘d’ is the cost of such climate change. If there is a non-zero chance of catastrophic climate change, of ecological collapse, then even if that chance is low, the costs will be so high that p.d will still be high, high enough to outweigh the costs of avoiding it however low the value of p.

Kerry-Lieberman

2010-05-17T03:52:00.001-04:00

The Kerry-Lieberman bill is far from perfect. But it does not matter. Given the current horizon of polictical possiblity, anything that can be passed is bound to be too weak. And given the indeterminacies of measurement and growth of carbon output, current goal setting is a shot in the dark. None of that matters. What matters is that we put in place a framework and mechanism that can be adjusted over time as our knowledge improves. What also matters is that the United States take unilateral action that can be used as a political lever on others to take action as well - most especially China.

Chinese energy demand

2010-05-10T10:10:00.001-04:00

As China moves toward higher consumption and a switch to heavier industrial production, The New York Times reports that: “Even as China has set ambitious goals for itself in clean-energy production and reduction of global warming gases, the country’s surging demand for power from oil and coal has led to the largest six-month increase in the tonnage of human generated greenhouse gases ever by a single country.” Why coal? Because it constitutes 94% of China’s energy resources. Wind production may have doubled, but, as the Times reports, it still only constitutes 2% of electricity production. More troubling still, "China’s National Bureau of Statistics has begun a comprehensive revision of all of the country’s energy statistics for the last 10 years, restating them with more of the details commonly available in other countries’ data. Western experts also expect the revision to show that China has been using even more energy and releasing even more greenhouse gases than previously thought. Revising the data now runs the risk that other countries will distrust the results and demand greater international monitoring of any future pledges by China. If the National Bureau of Statistics revises up the 2005 data more than recent data, for example, then China might appear to have met its target at the end of this year for a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency.” For more see: May 6, 2010
China’s Energy Use Threatens Goals on Warming
By KEITH BRADSHER

Lucky gains

2010-05-03T08:40:00.000-04:00

I have written about luck before in the context of the use of resources that everyone thought to be unlimited but turned out not to be so. Today I want to consider a different kind of luck. Geoengineeering harms and compensation: Suppose geoengineering were used to cool the planet and did so on average but was nonetheless expected to cause harm to some by making them worse off than by climate change alone. Should we differentiate between those made worse off from GAINS they made through climate change (eg Canadian farmers) versus those made worse off relative to LOSSES through climate change (eg Ugandan farmers )? If so how? Do law and morality come apart on this issue? Assume that as the world gets hotter, Canadian farmers’ crop yields increase by $x. Assume that as the world gets hotter, Ugandan farmers’ crop yields decrease by $y. When geoengineering is used to cool the planet, the Canadians’ crop yield decrease by $x as temperature is reduced. But assume that such reduction is not uniform worldwide and that in fact in some regions, temperature goes up and precipitation goes down as compared to the levels AFTER climate change. That is to say, for those regions geoengineering makes things worse not better. Thus, assume that fir Ugandan farmers, geoengineering produces a reduction in crop yield of $x. Empirical data and modeling data support this hypothetical for areas of sub-Saharan Africa and India due to changes in cloud cover as well as disruption of the monsoon cycle. The Canadians and the Ugandans suffer the identical loss due to geoengineering but for different reasons. The Canadians lose because their gains from climate change are offset as cooling takes place locally due to geoengineering. The Ugandans lose because their losses from climate change are made worse as heating takes place locally due to geonengineerering. Should there harms be given equal moral standing? Assume causal responsibility plays no role in differentiating between the two. The intended policy is to cool the planet. Such an intervention is global and since not all localities where affected by climate change to the same degree, the intervention is bound to have uneven effects. Still, there is a difference between uneven benefits of a policy and harms created by that policy. The Canadians suffer a loss as a consequence of the implementation of a policy not just less benefit than others. So do the Ugandans, but their loss is a direct harm created by an unintended effect of the implementation of the policy, not just a consequence of it being inherently uneven in its intended effects. But that seems to be a distinction that carries no moral weight. Another difference is this – judged relative to the post climate change environment, both the Canadians and the Ugandans suffer an equal loss. But judged relative to the pre climate change environment, only the Ugandans suffer a loss. But why should one basis for measuring loss count more than the other? So what grounds the idea that the Ugandans should be treated differently from the Canadians? That even though both have been harmed, that both have been made worse off, only the former has an entitlement? I say it is because the Canadians’ gain was “lucky” in the following way - suppose my tree blocks your view of the ocean. My tree falls down and you gain an ocean view. Now you try to stop me replanting a tree claiming it would deprive you of your gain. (Note: if I dally for generations in planting the tree you may indeed have an entitlement based on detrimental reliance.) Contrast that to the Ugandans – they are akin to my other neighbor on whose roof the tree fell. (And whose property I need access to to bring the new tree onto my property.) One way to ground this intuition is by way of an egalitarian conception of equity. As my colleague Larry Temkin writes: “Among equally deserving people, it is bad, because unfair, for some to be worse off than others through no fault or choice of their own.” “Luck” follows directly from this conception: “....luck egalitarians object when equally deserving people are unequally well off, but not when one person is worse off than another due to her own responsible choices, say to pursue a life of leisure or crime.”

Collars on caps

2010-04-26T02:20:00.000-04:00

The great virtue of cap and trade over taxes is that the former gives you determinate levels of carbon output. Taxes, as Paul Krugman put it in the NYT a few weeks ago, give you determinate price but indeterminate carbon output. If you are worried about climate, the former wins out over the latter hands down unless you have a mechanism for adjusting taxes to adjust carbon output. But such a mechanism forces legislators to revote and pay the price of such votes – for one big difference between permits and taxes is that the former can be handled administratively unlike the latter. When it comes to cap and trade, there is another trade off – how smooth you want to make market adjustments. One way to achieve that is by gradually tightening caps. Another way is by introducing a price collar that provides both a floor and a ceiling on the traded price of permits. The problem with such a ceiling is that it simply acts to bust the cap unless it is implemented very judiciously. The problem is that once the mechanism is in place, there will always be a temptation to invoke it in response to howls of pain as the caps are tightened. The only way to avoid that, is to tightly specify how and when such a collar kicks in. The current bill under design in the Senate has worrisome features in its collar provisions that should raise alarms – the worst thing would be to have cap and trade with a collar that is so tight that you have no real determinate limits on carbon at all. Indeed that might be worse that a tax!

More on fairness

2010-04-19T14:51:00.004-04:00

Last week I wrote about fair pricing. This week is about fairness and a change in pricing regimes. Under what circumstances is a change in pricing fair? At the Rutgers April 9th meeting (which will soon be avaialble online), Frank Felder took up that question directly, while William Hogan proceeded from a conditional : if an existing system is fair, what changes are allowable that would retain its fairness? These are really issues about efficiency and fairness. The easiest cases occur when there is no change in fairness but a gain in efficiency, or even better, a gain in both. Anything else puts the two on a collision course - something we are often hard pressed to take seriously, because the assumptions of standard economics with which we have been raised tell us this is impossible. For that theory tells us that the most efficient outcome is the fairest outcome. But of course that is only true when the idealized assumptions (like equal initial endowments, perfect information and a high number of market participants) of the theory are satisfied. How much should we care if fairness and efficiency do come apart in utility pricing? Must we choose? Philosophers shy away from using rights talk in the premises of arguments for anything but negative rights – the right not to be interfered with. If there is a right to food, housing, or even utility services, these come as the conclusion of arguments. I think these are harder arguments to make than people think. On the other hand, I don’t think it is hard to make the argument that there is a prima facie right to a fair share of such goods. Indeed, I would claim that recognize this right is at the core of what it is to take on the moral “point of view”. Thinking like this makes it easier to ground the idea that in the case of greenhouse gasses, the safe annual global budget (about 18 gigatons) should be divided on a per capita basis, and given as a tradable right. For now we think of this in terms of nation states. But it is not outlandish to imagine the proliferation of information technology that would allow individuals to be assigned such rights and to trade both them, and some sort of associated non-renewable energy allowance. Why do that rather than relying on the existing market? Because as we saw earlier, a market system only marries fairness to efficiency if we can assume an equal endowment of resources, perfect information and the like. Trying to backward engineer that into the existing market is next to impossible. On the other hand, overlaying a market for tradable rights on top of existing markets may allow us to do just that.

Is flat fair?

2010-04-12T05:22:00.000-04:00

We held a conference last week on pricing schemes for utilities. The idea of using prices to either smooth out peak demand (and thereby cut capacity) or reduce overall demand has to meet two objections. One is that there are classes of people who have little choice about when they need to use power (eg night shift workers who need to run air conditioners to sleep during the day) or overall demands (eg most dramatically someone on an iron lung). Here the challenge is to identify such people. Some poor people (with a lot of kids) may use a lot of electricity. And some rich people (with second homes) may use very little (in that home). So identifying those in need is not as easy as it seems at first. One interesting suggestion (by Bill Hogan of Harvard) is to reverse the challenge. Assume everyone is needy and then identify those to exclude. That may be just as hard, but at least you err on the side of caution in throwing your net too wide. The other challenge is the claim that flat pricing is more equitable than other systems for pricing – like real time pricing (which charges based on the actual wholesale prince at the time of consumption) or inverted block pricing (which charges more the more you use). I don’t think this argument from equity is very easy to make. But that said, I do think there are arguments that can be made to support the idea that flat pricing and its competitors as alternative ways to share out costs which we can choose between based on primarily pragmatic grounds. Just because electricity is more expensive at some times of the day than others, does not automatically generate an argument that pricing should follow. We may choose to do so on policy grounds, but that in itself does not generate a moral argument. Here is a parallel. Heavy people and light people pay the same prince for airlines tickets. But it costs more to fly heavy people than light people. We could have a policy of charging by the pound and weighing at the gate. We don’t do that. Other considerations outweigh the benefits of doing so.

Unknowns

2010-04-05T13:33:00.002-04:00

We held an interesting national working meeting at Rutgers last week on people as citizens as opposed to consumers. I thinK we focus too much on the latter when the key is the former. Acquiescence to government policy is much more important than changing light bulbs. The goal of the meeting was more to throw up questions in need of research than anything else. Among the most interesting:
1.Even if acting as a consumer does not do much goOd directly, does it create more of a commitment to acting as a citizen when it comes to climate policy support?
2.Does a focus on climate adaption increase or decrease the chances of support for mitigation policy?
3.How much do voters vote out of self-interest as opposed to national interest when the two are in conflict?
4.What determines when a partisan legislative issue continues to be contested after lesigslation?

Thoughts on a meeting about geoengineering experimentation.

2010-03-29T07:18:00.000-04:00

1. I very much like a suggestion of David Keith that we make a distinction between “processes” research and “sub-scale deployment” research.
2. Of course, this is a murky distinction – much process research is very sub-scale deployment.
3. I would argue that it would be a real contribution to characterize this distinction in clear terms with a goal of carving out the process work so it is either unobjectionable or already regulated. If these do not suffice, drawing up regulative guidelines would be very worthwhile. I taking the guiding idea to be this: process research can be reliably characterized ex ante as posing no risk.
4. When it comes to sub-scale deployment, if you think such deployment is plausible given the timeline David posed, I agree with a view espoused by David Morrow that consent is key. But I don’t think it is useful to use(as he suggests) a biomedical model for the following reasons:
i. The population of the world is not one person-like entity. So there is no one thing in which benefits and burdens can be balanced.
ii. A maximin approach (only pursue a course of action if you know ex ante that it will be at worst the best off all possible worst off outcomes) assumes we have knowledge of risks and we don’t.
iii. In hospital committees (and I have served on them) there are occasional such cases but they only proceed with terminal patients for which no existing treatment is available. Not only is the world not one patient it is not terminal!
5. You may say, “look, how can we make things worse than we are already with climate change”? The burden is on you then to show that you can’t. Not that you can’t on average, but that you can’t for at least some non-trivial parts of the world in some non-trivial ways. I don’t think you will be able to do that until and unless climate models improve to give confidence in predictions at a local level.
6. Without such confidence, I would urge a ban on sub-scale deployment for now.
7. This is no great sacrifice for advocates of such deployment, for all those who favor research have their hand full with the “process” agenda.

Cognitive Dilemmas

2010-03-15T07:41:00.000-04:00

Talks at a conference I was at this week on cognitive theories and climate change were by and large wildly optimistic about the lessons of behavioral economics, neuro-economics, as well as evolutionary psychology to provide a basis for changing people’s behavior. “Wildly optimistic” because the participants were oversold on these approaches and seduced into thinking the problem of climate behavior is just that we have failed to see some key switch that these theories uncover. Wish that it was so easy! Of the three, behavioral economics is the only one that has delivered anything approaching a set of empirically reliable findings but they are incredibly piecemeal and constitute nothing approaching a comprehensive alternative to the “standard” model. All of that said, I was stuck again and again by two features of our constitution that make things so hard. One is this: we are much more responsive to appeals in terms of the local effects of climate as opposed to universal effects or effects on others. That is a problem if you live in an area that is comparatively unaffected by prospective climate change (and lots are especially in the Developing World given its location and adaptive wealth). But the trouble goes beyond making the salient effects of climate on the “other” real for “us” when the other lives far from our environs. For the real other effected by climate change are those of future generations – and not just the next generation or the one after that. To see the problem, imagine (if you don’t have any yet) your grandchildren. Think of providing for their well being in your will. Now do the same for their children. And their children. And so on. See how soon you become indifferent even if they are your genetic descendents. I can only keep it up for 2 generations. So the first problem is that it is very hard to feel anything for those who will be most affected by our actions. The second cognitive problem is the challenge of climate is (at least in part) one of dealing with a low risk, high cost outcome. If I tell you there is a non-zero chance of truly cataclysmic ecological collapse, you ought to pay heed as a rational action – however low the probability, as long as it is not zero, the high cost will swamp it out creating an obvious choice to act to avoid it. But we are not making that obvious choice. Here is why (I think): we actually face low probability, high cost alternatives every day – when I cross the street I may be run down by a car. When I fly, the plane may. When I eat out, I may get botulism. And on and on. Now all of these may cancel each other out. If I have to travel, all kinds of travel carry potential (low probability) deadly worst case scenarios. They have different probabilities but that difference gets washed out by the size of the cost – especially if you attach an infinite cost to the loss of your own life! So I suspect we are just not very good at making such assessments – even when doing so could count for a lot.

India

2010-03-08T13:29:00.000-05:00

Isabel Hilton has an interesting profile of India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. (See http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2247.)Hilton quotes Ramesh at the 2007 Sustainable Development Summit in Delhi, attacking India’s reluctance to contemplate limiting its future emissions as outdated and unhelpful: “If we have superpower ambitions and superpower visions then we should take on superpower responsibilities.” It merits reading this sentence through the lens of Chinese-Indian competition in the 20th century. One of the lessons of Copenhagen was China's ambiguous relationship to Developing World interests. China is not only the world's leading carbon emitter but already above its allocation on a per capita "fair share" basis. Not so India. And with a significant cushion before it reaches such a per capita level, unlike China, an Indian willingness to act repsosnilibty is a costless gesture - but one that reaps large political benefits for it in both the Developing and the Developed World.

One big fear

2010-03-02T07:53:00.000-05:00

I have always argued we ought to be as worried about the aftermath of legislation and getting it through in the first place. Once in place, the key is to win voter acquiescence so that the legislation is resistant to repeal or revocation. California and New Jersey have led the way with biding legislation of greenhouse gas reductions and both are parts of regional cap and trade systems. Now we see the first signs of how these kinds of efforts may get undermined. In California an attempt is being made to put in place a voter initiative to suspend the climate legislation because of unemployment. In New Jersey, Governor Christie has announced plans to divert funds raised by cap and trade auctions to the general fund to deal with the state deficit. These are both shortsighted moves because they undermine the need to render climate legislation sacrosanct – off the table for partisan political jousting – in a way that a few political issues are treated. But achieving that sacrosanct status is really what you need to do for any issue for which you want to win voter acceptance through thick and thin …. something we know we need to gain when it comes to climate legislation since we know it is eventually going to hurt.

Geoenigneering and risk: more

2010-03-01T11:14:00.000-05:00

Let us assume, though limited experimentation, we can be confident that we can effect an overall cooling of the plant by sulfur injection – we just don’t know what the risks of such planetary insertion are. Insertion might buy us 50 years to develop other technologies to deal with the underlying problem. We also don’t know the risk of climate warming which we could avoid by sulfur insertion – at least for those 50 years. (Assume here what most climatologists take to be the case: these are our likely choices, even if we ceased all carbon output today, because of warming already built into the climate system.) So here is a choice in which we are ignorant on both alternatives when it comes to some worst case scenarios. Why isn’t the rational choice to bracket these and make the decision based on other considerations? Am I evincing a prejudice against advertent intervention over inadvertent intervention? I think there is a different consideration that makes my argument non-prejudicial. Assume global warming carries some risk known only to God as it were. Geoengineering is an imperfect offset for that warming at best. For example, it does not counter ocean acidification. As such it is a mistake to treat the choice as an exclusive one between climate change and geoengineering. We can’t rule out that geoengineering might make things worse (at least locally) than they would be with climate change alone. Still, we make choices in everyday life in the face of worst case scenarios that loom in the background. Crossing the street, I may be run down. The plane I ride on may crash. The food I consume may be fatally contaminated. But these are cases in which we can be crudely guided by expected utility. (“Crudely” because as behavioral psychology has show, we discount the future more than we should, we overvalue the familiar, and so on.) Courting death may make sense (for me at least) when I chance giving up longevity for a life of gluttony given my preferences. But what about when I can’t assign probabilities to such outcomes? You are dying, nothing more can be done for you as things stand. The doctor comes in with news – there is a new idea. We have no sense whether it will help or hurt. Should you try it? Why not, you have nothing to lose. But of course, that is only because all is lost. But that is not the risk posed by climate change. Things are (possibly) very bad. But we don’t face extinction (in the short term). The parallel here is that you are very sick with an unknown prognosis and no treatment alternatives. The doctor comes in again with the same offer. If you are a gambler by preference perhaps you should double up on risk. Or perhaps you should toss a coin. But the problem of geoengineering is one level more complex than this. For all the unknowns concerning risks, there is some reason to believe that those risks, if they exist are not going to be equally spread throughout the planet. For example, one of the unknowns about sulfur insertion is its effect on participation patterns as opposed to temperature. Hence those populations that are vulnerable to precipitation stress are more at risk than other if there is indeed risk. A lottery in which (we hope) most will benefit and some will be hurt is one thing when everyone has an equal chance. But without that an equal chance, incentives for those less likely to benefit to agree to such a lottery decline.

Geoengineering Research Reservations

2010-02-22T20:44:00.000-05:00

Remarks to AAAS, Feb. 20th San Diego

My interest in these remarks is how to assess the risks inherent in geoengineering.
My argument is that geoengineering is deviant when it comes to the normal process by which science proceeds – perhaps deviant enough to undermine the whole enterprise.

Some proponents of geoengineering advocate limited experimentation to better the technology by which full scale geoengineering might be effectively implemented. But if there is no basis for full scale implementation whether or not the technology is available, the value of researching the technology is thrown into question.

In these remarks, my talk of geoengineering is restricted to solar radiation management and does not include carbon capture. Moreover the kind of solar radiation management I have in mind is planetary wide and (for the purposes of discussion) sulfur insertion into the stratosphere. (This is not an arbitrary focus in that, with others, I take this to be the only currently plausible candidate to achieve a 2 degree centigrade cooling should there be a need to do so.)

Some people have worried that such insertion on a planetary wide basis might produce unforeseen global consequences due to unexpected atmospheric non-linearities. I think these worries are over blown based our general knowledge of atmospheric systems and the record of volcanic eruptions which insert concentrations of SO2 many times greater than the concentration that would be needed to produce a 2 degree cooling.

The locus of my worry is quite different: our current climate models become progressively weaker in their accuracy the more fine grained you go. At the local level, they are of limited value. As such, assessing the risk of sulfur insertion when it comes to local weather disruption (and attendant agricultural output) is very hard to do. And of these the most notable area of concern is monsoon disruption. Indeed, both theory and modeling raise concerns about sulfur’s role in affecting precipitation as opposed to temperature. (See G. C. Hegerl, S. Solomon, Science 325, 955 (2009); published online 6 August 2009 (10.1126/science.1178530), and A. Robock, L. Oman, G. L. Stenchikov, J. Geophys. Res.113, D16101 (2008).) But even bracketing these considerations, my argument is more abstract: in its applications, most science proceeds from a model, to the laboratory, to field tests, and only finally to wide implementation. Nowhere is that more true than in medicine. At each stage, there is trade off between verisimilitude to the final implementation and the limitation of risk. (Think of the use of animals in experimentation.) What makes that possible is that most of science deals with modular phenomena. You can test a vaccine on one person, putting that person at risk, without putting everyone else at risk. So, even though we have lot of planetary wide goals – like eradicating smallpox – we can test them for untoward effects before full scale implementation. Not so for geoengineering. You can’t build a scale model of the atmosphere or tent off part of the atmosphere. As such you are stuck going directly from a model to full scale planetary wide implementation.

It has been argued that sulfur insertion could be usefully implemented in polar regions without effects on the rest of the planet. But modeling to date as well as the volcanic record would seem to undermine this idea by demonstrating that polar insertion does not in fact remain restricted to those latitudes.
The idea that one could study the risk of planetary wide insertion with low concentrations might seem plausible. But it has been shown that doing so would require at least a decade to derive enough data to differentiate a signal from noise. (See Robock, Alan , Martin Bunzl, Ben Kravitz, and Georgiy Stenchikov, 2010: A test for geoengineering? Science, 327, 530-531, doi:10.1126/science.1186237.)

Geoengineering is not unique in forcing us to go directly from a model to full scale planetary wide implementation – but it is rare. The only other example I can think of is genetically altered crops. But a difference between the two is that in the case of genetically altered crops, we have rich theoretical knowledge of natural selection as well as a long history of selective breeding.

One response to these concerns is to argue that risk is risk and all risk can always be assimilated into a standard cost-benefit (or expected utility maximization) analysis. On that basis, the risks of climate change may be greater than the risks of geoengineering, especially when understood as a temporary stop gap measure.

But such analyses become less and less coherent as our ignorance of both the likelihood and the magnitude of worst case scenarios goes up. That is as true of our understanding of potential untoward effects of geoengineering interventions as it is for the effects climate change itself.

Now one response to such ignorance is to defend a variety of precautionary principles which come down (in philosophical terms) to adopting what is known as a maximin principle. That is, choose between alternative courses of action so that the worst case outcome is the best of alternative worst case outcomes.

But to even apply such a maximin approach assumes we have some knowledge to characterize these alternatives. My claim is that we do not have such knowledge in hand for geoengineering and I don’t see how we can gain it to have a basis on which to make a prudent choice until and unless our climate models undergo considerable improvement. Nor do I think is it plausible to think that international agreement to implement geoengineeering would be likely without such improvement in our models.

As such, a focus on more benign forms of intervention that don’t need to be implemented on a planetary wide basis has much to recommend itself, including, especially, ambient carbon capture.

On risk

2010-02-15T01:24:00.000-05:00

Debate about climate change and its attendant risks is dominated by too many people with the following conviction: all risk can always be assimilated into a standard cost-benefit (or utility maximization) analysis even if the tail is “fat”. But doing that becomes less and less coherent as our ignorance of both probability and the cost of worst case scenarios go up. One response to this problem is to defend a variety of precautionary principle analysis which, in philosophy, comes down to a maximin approach – that is, choose the alternative in which the worst outcome is the best of all possible worst outcomes. But even such approaches assume some knowledge to characterize the alternatives. But our problem is that we don’t even have this minimum knowledge.

China after Copenhagen

2010-02-08T02:37:00.000-05:00

In an interesting post on ChinaDialogue which is reprinted at my programs website (www.csp.rutgers.edu), Qin Xuan, a reporter at Southern Metropolis Daily, analyzes the aftermath of Copenhagen citing some sources close to the Chinese delegation. The most interesting claim is that the “developed nations are becoming more closely aligned, while developing nations are diverging. Maintaining unity within the developing world is an increasingly difficult task” for China. Indeed, the core of Xuan’s analysis is that members of the “BASIC” group (China, India, Brazil and South Africa) are increasingly seen by developing countries as more part of the developing bloc in the alignment of climate interests. Qin Xuan write that “I believe that China should form a twenty-first-century diplomatic strategy to deal with climate change. At the core of this strategy will be this question: what costs is China willing to bear to meet regional and global diplomatic responsibilities? Until those strategic changes have been made, it is hard to imagine there will be any progress in climate-change negotiations.”

Geoengineering - more

2010-02-01T01:28:00.001-05:00

Here is a link to some recent work my colleagues and I published that again focuses on the problem of argicultural risk in geoengineering. The central claim of this paper is that you can't assess for these risks without full scale multi-year implementation. To do that prudently, we argue, you would need to make provision for the chance of widespread multi-year crop failure affecting up to 2 billion people. For details go to: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;327/5965/530?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=bunzl&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

Does Nature have rights?

2010-01-25T17:03:00.000-05:00

Writing about historical carbon output, like most philosophers, I worry about who has done what, who is owed and who owes, whether ignorance matters or not, and so on. But in all of this debate there is an embarrassing silence about “Nature”. As we worry about what (if anything) the Developed World owes the Developing World, a fair division of the pie seems still to only involve “us”. As I have posted here before, one reason for that is that we don’t have room in our moral discourse for things like Nature – because, as it were they are things and not people. “People” here need not mean just humans. In fact a humans can cease to be a person (if they are brain damaged enough) and, if there are Martians, that in itself ought not to prevent them being people (if nonetheless rather different from people we have encountered to date). If this is sounding like a non-standard use of the term ‘people’ it is. I am using the term to apply to anything that ought to be treated as having a claim to moral standing. What you need to have to underwrite such a claim is where the philosophical trouble starts. Is it a point of view? Something like it is to be you? These notions impose pretty strong standards to meet – perhaps sentience. And so on that account, both Nature and most of the things that make it up, don’t qualify. On the other hand, if we weaken the condition on moral standing to having interests in some vaguely objective sense (say reproduction and survival) then stones don’t have standing but flees do. Hold on! Does a flee really care if it is eaten or not? And that pushes us back into the arms of a condition of standing that it is likely that only we can satisfy. But Stone’s wonderful article “Should Trees have Standing?”, reprinted in a book of his essays with the same title, takes a radically different tack to break this impasse. Begin with the Law not Philosophy he argues – and take legal rules as nothing more than rules, not as rules that express underlying moral principles. Then ask if those rules can be plausibly applied to things that do not have interests of their own. The key move in this is the model of guardianship. Consider a profoundly brain damaged child for whom a guardian is appointed to speak on the child’s behalf, to represent the child’s interests. Now the philosopher wants to say, “Wait a minute! What if the child has no interests. What if the child is so brain damaged that it (literally) has no point of view?” Stone’s argument is that this does not matter from the point of view of the law. All that matters is what the law decrees. “…. what the legal rules touching on the ward provide”. And if those rules can accommodate the guardianship of trees, so much the better. Is this anything more than legal sophistry? Does it carry any philosophical weight? Here is why I think it does – Stone’s argument is embedded in a much broader conception of the relationship of ethics and the law. The law, he argues, develops by extension and in doing so, it offers us a social mechanism to develop our account of ethics as well.

On Lomborg

2010-01-18T03:03:00.000-05:00

A reader asked my view of Bjorn Lomberg. Lomberg argues vigorously for the view that the cost of mitigating climate change would be better spent on other programs for the benefit of the poor. All other things being equal, eradicating malaria will produce more good than avoiding climate change as it were – at least when it comes to spending today’s dollars. The argument assumes a number of things: 1. That we have fixed resources so there is a choice. 2. That if the money were not to go to climate mitigation it would go for the benefit of the poor. 3. That even if putting off the mitigation of climate change increases the cost of mitigation and adaption in terms of today’s dollars, the lower cost of future dollars (and technology) will more than offset that. My reaction to this line of argument is fourfold: 1. I don’t think our resources are fixed and I think it is naïve politically to think that money is fungible in any case. 2. Our inaction now effect not just the costs of future action but also the probability of some climate effects that once they occur cannot be undone. These include extinctions but more significantly ice melts. 3. If we proceed on a business as usual way, we will exhaust a 450ppm CO2 budget by 2050. That would mean proceeding with zero net carbon emissions from then on which is totally implausible. 4. Like most projections in climate, Lomberg pays too little attention to the effects of climate change on GDP growth itself as opposed to the effect of climate mitigation. My skepticism is different from Lomberg’s in the following way: in projections of the cost of mitigation, economic growth is set as an externality derived from business as usual models. The projection then simply assume the availability of “green” energy whatever the economic growth is set at in the models. The cost comparison is then between the cost of economic growth by green as opposed to fossil fuel. This sidesteps the question of the availability of such green energy at the level and on a timetable consistent with the projected rate of economic growth. My colleagues and I are beginning to look at this most closely in a case study of China’s economic and energy needs between now and 2030.

China's stand

2010-01-11T07:18:00.000-05:00

Cao Haili’s interesting post on ChinaDialogue - When China said “no” – deserves close attention. It is reposted at www.csp.rutgers.edu
As Haili reports: Besides the rift between China and the United States over measuring, reporting and verification (MRV), the cited evidence of China’s “wrecking” behaviour was its firm opposition to inclusion of the target of global emissions reduction of 50% on 1990 levels by 2050, with developed nations making cuts of 80%. The reason for China’s opposition was simple: it would restrict China’s development. Given the country’s rate of development and its economic and energy structure, the target would be a tough one for it to reach. Lu Xuedu, a Chinese delegate and deputy director of the National Climate Center, pointed out that global carbon emissions in 1990 were 21 billion tonnes, so a 50% cut by 2050 would mean emissions of 10.5 billion tonnes. In 2005, China emitted 6 billion tonnes of carbon. If the current rate of development continues, those 10.5 billion tonnes might not be enough for China alone, let alone the rest of the world.

There is some hyperbole in Lu’s comment – nobody, not even China, expects it to continue to grow at its current rate for the next 40 years. As a maturing economy it is bound to be lower than the current 8-10% rate and more likely in the 5-7% range. Its energy intensity is also bound to improve as well as its economy undergoes maturation. That is not to say that China’s planned rate of growth and associated energy needs are self-evidently compatible. But as Einstein said in a different context, “god is in the details”.

Citizens or Consumers?

2010-01-04T07:50:00.001-05:00

We spend far too much time worrying about how to change energy behavior of individuals – although we know full well that the energy savings under individual control are modest. Market forces and national policy set the range of choices that individuals have and significant change means operating at that level. As such, it is action as citizens not consumers that need attention. Action here means voting – voting to support politicians who implement climate friendly policies or at least acquiescing to such policies. Ed Maibach (of George Mason) writes that with regard to climate change, “Our data, however, shows that even among the one segment of Americans who are truly committed to addressing climate change, they are vastly more likely to be responding as consumers than as citizens.” It is common to think that, notwithstanding the limited direct energy savings of individual action, the real payoff is that such a focus set one on the path to citizen support of policy. But is there actually any evidence to support this view?

In reaction to Gore

2009-12-28T07:06:00.000-05:00

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore shows a picture of the land in Tennessee he grew up on.
“You look at that river gently flowing by. You notice the leaves rustling with the wind. You hear the birds; you hear the tree frogs. In the distance you hear a cow. You feel the grass. The mud gives a little bit on the river bank. It’s quiet; it’s peaceful.”
He speaks movingly about his desire not to see its beauty ravaged by climate change. But in doing so, he allows the impression that all we need to do is to make a few changes, and the rest will be business as usual. For us and him on his land.
Change my light bulbs. Drive less. Heat my house less. Fly less. The Sierra Club gives me a list of ten things. I am advised to plant a tree in my garden. Other have longer to do lists for me. Puffing out its chest, Vanity Fair demands another forty things. I should forgo preheating the oven. Not to be outdone, the Palm Beach Post offers ninety nine prescriptions! (Use a hand potato masher instead of an electric one.)
*George Marshall says I ought not to think of any of this as a sacrifice. He says I will feel proud. My new life style “will be a statement of who I am – a smart aware person living in the 21st century.”(p.135) Al Gore and me, standing shoulder to shoulder. Why am I so unmoved? I want to be moved. I want to move. Yet here I sit. Unmoved. My lethargy might be because I really don’t think my actions will make much of a difference. I don’t think my voting makes a difference. But the same thought does not stop me voting. Of course I only have to vote once in a while, so it is an act of minimal inconvenience. Is it that what I am asked to do here is so inconvenient and complicated?
Others tell me something more is afoot. Both Al Gore and I need to change our whole outlook on life to save the planet. *Gus Speth says I have to stop looking at nature as a means to my ends. I am too materialistic and too individualistic. *Bill McKibben says I have to reintegrate human society and nature and foreswear anthropocentrism for a “biocentric” world view. I am told I should embrace a humbler world. If I listen to Speth and McKibben I need to turn my life upside down. Even if I wanted to do that, I don’t even know how to begin. The contours of my life are sown into a web of relations with that makes such a change hard to contemplate except as a fantasy. I give everything away, sever all ties, live in shack, tend my fields and collect firewood. Even if that is fine for some it is not for me. Like Woody Allen says, I get nervous outside my natural environs of a city.
Al Gore whispers in my ear: “Ignore McKibben and Speth! They are naysayers and luddites. Walden pond romantics! Stick with me. Together we can solve this problem. Yes, big changes are needed, but that does not mean our way of life has to change. All we need to do is to commit our nation to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years. When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2 months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon. We must now lift our nation to reach another goal that will change history. Our entire civilization depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind." [** NOTE: THIS IS PARTLY MADE UP DIALOGUE AND PARTLY QUOTE FROM PHILADELPHIA SPEECH.]
Is it that simple? Merely a matter of will and our (American) ingenuity? Gore makes it seem almost un-American to wonder if there is a technical solution merely waiting for the ambitious to grab. There is always a technical solution to every problem. That is what makes America America! And if my friends still die of cancer or AIDS decades after Kennedy like moon programs were declared, we just have not tried hard enough. But going to the moon was just rocket science and rocket science is not very fancy science. If I am allowed to stamp my foot and command discovery or innovation I too can solve the problem – even respecting the laws of nature. And in the long run, no doubt we can solve the problem. But as Keynes reminded us, in the long run we are all dead.
Al points his finder at me. “Maybe you didn’t listen to my speech carefully enough. I said we can solve this problem in 10 years. All we need to decide to do it do it!”
I don’t get it – don’t facts intrude? Where do we store the power for use at night when there is no wind or light? How do we overcome the finite supply of raw materials for solar panels? What about China and India’s rising energy needs? Gore casts a condescending eye on me. It is as if I am sitting on the bench next to Bush in a debate listening to Gore:
“Of course there are those who will tell us this can't be done. Some of the voices we hear are the defenders of the status quo - the ones with a vested interest in perpetuating the current system, no matter how high a price the rest of us will have to pay. But even those who reap the profits of the carbon age have to recognize the inevitability of its demise. As one OPEC oil minister observed, ‘The Stone Age didn't end because of a shortage of stones.”’
Right. It ended because a more productive cost effective technology came along. Al Gore in his bully pulpit, stamping his foot can’t change the fact that that is just what we lack for now and the foreseeable future. Now he is getting really irritated with Bush and me. We are not tall and he has a way of arching his back that makes him seem even taller than he is.
He looks down on us. “You know, if you had paid attention you would have heard me call for CO2 caps and taxes! It is all so simple.”
“I smell a rat!” says Bush. “You think the American people are going to support more taxes on energy? And b’sides, Bunzl here says there in’t enough of your “alternative” energy to go around. You think those Chinese and Indians are goin to stop growin. You think their goin leave their coal in the ground!”
He elbows me. I become professorial to add some gravitas to my brief. “China will move 450 million people from the country to the cities in the next 20 years. City people use three times the energy of country people. Sixty percent of India’s population lacks electricity. India’s national goal is to be 100% electrified by 2030.”
“See” gloats Bush, nodding at Gore.
“Look, we can make the tax on CO2 revenue neutral by reducing payroll taxes. And I already said we need to be committed to also eradicating poverty and disease worldwide,” says Gore.
Bush takes a short breath and cocks his head in my direction.
“With all due respect, in addition to promising our American lifestyle will not have to change, you now seem to hold that it will cost us nothing and the rest of the world can come to live the way we do as well.”
Bush looks at me suspiciously. “I thought you were on my side. We ain’t changing our lives and we sure ain’t goin to be paying more for them either as long as I am in charge!”
“Except you’ll ruin the planet in the process,” crows Gore. “ Only my way can save the planet, not raise costs, and eradicate poverty and disease.”
I leave them to carry on the debate. It seems too easy. In the end, I am sure I will have to pay more and change at least some of my life. Anything else goes against common sense. 600 million of us got the life we have because of our industrial revolution. Now 6 billion more want to join us.

Copenhagen

2009-12-21T21:08:00.004-05:00

A few initial remarks about what has just happened, followed by the full text of the "deal". (See also Isabel Hilton's Chinadialogue's remarks republished at www.csp.rutgers.org).

1. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now over 380 ppm and growing at more than 2 ppm per annum. It is broadly recognized that continued output at these rates for the next decade will make it extremely difficult to achieve stabilization at 450 ppm later in the century. Yet the prospects for a binding international agreement with country specific verifiable limits seems increasingly illusive. Absent such an agreement, what are the chances that the parties can blunder into de facto arrangements that accomplish the same thing?
2. Given how intent China was on preventing binding limits, one has to wonder. At the same time, even with binding limits, the absence of any realistic international enforcement mechanisms would have made such limits inherently weak. The only workable agreement is going to arise if and when the major players see it in their own interest to adhere to such limits. And they don’t, at least now.
3. What is immediately at stake is whether what has happened will help or hurt U.S. efforts to legislate its own limits. At this point it is too early to tell. If the gloss on the “deal” is that it is a plausible first step, things may go one way. If the gloss is along the lines above, I suspect not.
4. Perhaps more important is the fate of the EPA regulations, which if they stand, could do the same job as the legislation and only depend on the Obama’s administration’s determination.
5. Looking to the longer term, the chances of a global cap and trade system being established are surely weaker, and with it, the chances of properly pricing the true cost of carbon. That is bad news for efforts to prime market forces to drive alternatives.

Here is the full text of the tentative climate deal:
The Heads of State, Heads of Government, Ministers, and other heads of delegation present at the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen,
In pursuit of the ultimate objective of the Convention as stated in its Article 2,
Being guided by the principles and provisions of the Convention,
Noting the results of work done by the two Ad hoc Working Groups,
Endorsing decision x/CP.l5 that extends the mandate of the Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term cooperative action and decision x/CMP.5 that requests the Ad hoc Working Group on Further Commitments of Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol to continue its work, Have agreed on this Copenhagen Accord which is operational immediately.
1. We underline that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. We emphasise our strong political will to urgently combat climate change in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. To achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, we shall, recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees, on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change. We recognize the critical impacts of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures on countries particularly vulnerable to its adverse effects and stress the need to establish a comprehensive adaptation programme including international support.
2. We agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science, and as documented by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report with a view to reduce global emissions by 50 per cent in 2050 below 1990 levels,taking into account the right to equitable access to atmospheric space. We should cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that the time frame for peaking will be longer in developing countries and bearing in mind that social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing countries and that a low-emission development strategy is indispensable to sustainable development.
3. Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures is a challenge faced by all countries. Enhanced action and international cooperation on adaptation is urgently required to enstue the implementation of the Convention by enabling and supporting the implementation of adaptation actions aimed at reducing vulnerability and building resilience in developing countries, especially in those that are particularly vulnerable, especially least developed countries, small island developing States and tiuther taking into account the need of countries in Africa affected by drought, desertification and floods. We agree that developed countries shall provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology and capacity-building to support the implementation of adaptation action in developing countries.
4. Annex I Parties to the Convention commit to reducing their emissions individually or jointly by at least 80 per cent by 2050. They also commit to implement individually or jointly the quantified economy-wide emissions targets for 2020 as listed in appendix l, yielding in aggregate reductions of greenhouse gas emissions of X per cent in 2020 compared to 1990 and Y per cent in 2020 compared to 2005. Annex I Parties that are Party to the Kyoto Protocol will thereby further strengthen the emissions reductions initiated by the Kyoto Protocol. Delivery of reductions and financing by developed countries will be measured, reported and verified in accordance with existing and any further guidelines adopted by the Conference of Parties, and will ensure that accounting of such targets and finance is rigorous, robust and transparent.
5. Non-Annex I Parties to the Convention will implement mitigation actions, including those listed in appendix II, consistent with Article 4.1 and Article 4.7 and in the context of sustainable development. Mitigation actions subsequently taken and envisaged by Non Annex I Parties shall be communicated through national communications consistent with Article l2.1(b) every two years on the basis of guidelines to be adopted by the Conference of the Parties. Those mitigation actions in national communications or othenavise communicated to the Secretariat will be added to the list in appendix II. Mitigation actions taken by Non Parties will be subject to their domestic measurement, reporting and verification the result of which will be reported through their national communications every two years. Non Amiex I Parties will provide biennial national inventory reports in accordance with revised guidelines adopted by the Conference of the Parties. [Consideration to be inserted US and Chinal. Nationally appropriate mitigation actions seeking international support will be recorded in a registry along with relevant technology, finance and capacity building support. Those actions supported will be added to the list in appendix II. These supported nationally appropriate mitigation actions will be subject to intemational measurement, reporting and verification in accordance with guidelines adopted by the Conference ofthe Parties.
6. We recognize the crucial role of reducing emission irom deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals of greenhouse gas emission by forests and agree on the need to provide positive incentives to such actions through the immediate establishment of a mechanism including REDD-plus, to enable the mobilization of financial resources from developed countries.
7. We decide to ptusue various approaches, including opportunities to use markets, to enhance the cost-effectiveness of; and to promote mitigation actions. Developing countries, especially those with low emitting economies should be provided incentives to continue to develop on a low emission pathway.
8. Scaled up, new and additional, predictable and adequate fimding as well as improved access shall be provided to developing countries, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, to enable and support enhanced action on mitigation, including substantial finance to prevent deforestation (REDD-plus), adaptation, teclmology development and transfer and capacity-building, for enhanced implementation of the Convention. The collective commitment by developed countries is to provide new and additional resources amounting to 30 billion dollars for the period 2010 - 2012 as listed in appendix lll with balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation, including forestry. Funding for adaptation will be prioritized for the most vulnerable developing countries, such as the least developed countries, small island developing states and countries in Africa affected by drought, desertification and floods. In the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, developed countries support a goal of mobilizing jointly 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. This funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including altemative sources of finance. New multilateral funding for adaptation will be delivered through effective and efficient fund arrangements, with a governance structure providing for equal representation of developed and developing countries.
9. To this end, a High Level Panel will be established under the guidance of and accountable to the Conference of the Parties to assess the contribution of the potential sources of revenue, including alternative sources of finance, towards meeting this goal.
10. We decide that the Copenhagen Climate Fund shall be established as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention to support projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing cotmtries related to mitigation including REDD-plus, adaptation, capacity- building, technology development and transfer as set forth in decision -/CP.l 5.
ll. In order to enhance action on development and transfer of technology we decide to establish a Technology Mechanism as set forth in decision -/CP.l5 to accelerate technology development and transfer in support of action on adaptation and mitigation that will be guided by a country-driven approach and be based on national circumstances and priorities.
12. We call for a review of this Accord and its implementation to be completed by 2016, including in light of the Convention’s ultimate objective. This review would include consideration of strengthening the long-tenn goal to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 degrees.

India's important commitment

2009-12-14T06:49:00.000-05:00

Writing in this weeks Chinadialogue, Navroz K Dubash reports provides an informative overview of Indian politics on climate change: “For some, the climate negotiations are seen as no more than an economic containment strategy by the west. These “growth-first stonewallers” argue that even if climate change is real, the objective should be to maximise growth, so that India can better handle the impacts. Until then, the country should not compromise. For others, the effort to prioritise environmental sustainability and equity is stronger. These “progressive realists” are growth critics and, although keen to generate action on climate change, they are deeply cynical about the global negotiations. With the belief that these discussions sideline core concerns of equity, they call on India to take aggressive climate measures, but to do so domestically, de-linking these from the global process. Others believe that India should take on ambitious emission reduction measures and throw its weight fully behind a global climate deal. These “progressive internationalists” argue that doing so will help shift the global debate forward and spur matching action in other countries. Since climate impacts will disproportionately affect India's poor, they suggest that a pro-poor approach is also a pro-climate regime approach.” She goes on to report: “For advocates of a global climate deal, the good news is that the influence of growth-first stonewallers has waned in India. The bad news, however, is that the centre of gravity in India lies firmly with the progressive realists, who shy away from engagement in global climate politics, rather than with progressive internationalists, who seek to embrace it.” But that said, the Indian government has held to a long-standing position that deserves more attention – that India will commit to never exceed the per capita carbon output of the Developed World. You might think there is a trick here: that what is meant is that it commits never to exceed the high water mark that the Developed World has reached – about 20 tons per capita. But that is not what is meant. (I know this from direct conversation.) What is meant is that if the Developed World goes down to (say) 2 tons per capita – which is what it needs to do on a fair per capita basis to stabilize at 450 ppm – that is where India will go as well (even as it also makes a serious commitment to limit population growth). It is not a trivial commitment, even if it is based on a bet that the Developed will in fact never reach it. And it is a commitment that India can also afford to make because it is currently so far below that level at 1.2 tons per capita unlike China which is already at 4.6 tons per capita.

Holding my breath (again)

2009-12-07T15:21:00.000-05:00

With Copenhagen launching it is hard to think of anything else. So it seems the right time to list some cautionary notes and considerations:
1. Much commentary will revolve around the purloined emails which are a (discomforting) distraction. They don’t undermine the evidence in support of action – that evidence has never been overwhelming. It does not need to be. We are making a decision under uncertainty in which the payoff for being wrong are much lower than those for being right.
2. The absence of a legally binding agreement is a red herring. Legal agreements simply affirm real political agreements. The issue is whether there will be genuine political agreements.
3. Much attention will be focused on who is to pay what for the 3rd world adaption fund. This is a side show. Not that it is unimportant but it is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Most of the beneficiary countries don’t have and won’t have the output to make much a difference.
4. Of those that do, the real issue, as it was at Kyoto, is going to be whether they make commitments to absolute targets instead of carbon intensity targets (which don’t take account of economic growth).

China (again)

2009-11-30T11:25:00.003-05:00

China's announcement of a target of a reduction of 40%-45% in carbon intensity by 2020 as compared to 2005 levels is bad news. Bad news because a reduction in carbon intensity as opposed to absolute levels ignores economic growth. At a projected growth rate of 8% a year, in 10 years, China's economy will grow over 17 fold! But China is already emitting 4.6 tons of carbon dioxide per capita today which is more than its "fair share" if we aim for an allocation for a 450 ppm stabilization level. That figure is 2 tons of CO2 per person. In absolute terms (as opposed to carbon intensity), that demands a 90% reduction in current US emissions and over a 50% reduction in China's per capita emissions.

Changing attitudes

2009-11-23T14:07:00.000-05:00

I recently gave a talk on why changing attitudes is more important than changing behavior – changing attitudes toward government climate policy. The UK is the only place I know of where a concerted effort has been made to do this. It is instructive to attend to what has been found to work and not work there (as reported by Futerra Sustainability Communications):
What does not work:
• Recent surveys show that people without children may care more about climate change than those with children.
• Fear can create apathy if individuals have no ‘agency’ to act upon the threat. Use fear with great caution.
• The evidence discredits the ‘rational man’ theory – we rarely weigh objectively the value of different decisions and then take the clear self-interested choice.
• Providing information is not wrong; relying on information alone to change attitudes is wrong.
What has been found to work:
• Compelling mental picture of the positive goal
• A choice between the goal or the problem
• A strong and memorable 5 year plan
• Citizen level specifics that fit the goal and plan
• Getting the public talking
• The need for a desirable and descriptive mental picture of a low carbon, climate change adapted economy to open all climate change communications.
• The vision must be positive and it must be salient (i.e. paint a clear, appealing picture).
• Describing a positive solution in response to a problem does not work; leading with the vision is the only way to ensure we are listened to rather than ignored.
• The vision must create social proof (i.e. imply that “everyone” now wants this positive future for their children).
• Make climate change locally relevant.

Copenhagen or bust?

2009-11-16T16:38:00.002-05:00

Note to readers: I welcome comments on this blog but can only respond to them if you write using an email address that accepts replies.

So, there will be no binding agreement in Copenhagen. It does not matter. A binding formal agreement is the least important thing in the whole process – especially since, binding or not, enforcement of such an agreement is going to hinge on informal arrangements. What a binding agreement does is to formalize an already arrived at consensus. How you arrive at the consensus is another matter. The challenge of climate is of course this: Nature is not going to send us clear signals that underscore our common interests until it is too late. So one challenge is going to be whether, and how, to create enough of an international consensus to sway dissenters. One thing to keep in mind, it does not have to be an all or none matter – despite the claims of the Tragedy of the Commons. For more on this see my article in Climatic Change 2009 97:59-65. Here is a link to the paper: http://sites.google.com/site/mbunzl/toc

Why Copenhagen Matters

2009-11-09T09:41:00.000-05:00

Some are ready to declare Copenhagen dead along with any kind of agreement that depends on long-term commitments by sovereign states. Our chances are better to act unilaterally with international collaboration wherever possible. But I think it is a mistake to see the choice as between successful binding agreements by nation states and unilateralism. What the Copenhagen process offers (and after all it does not need to be concluded this year to be a success), is a context in which parties can create incentives to encourage commitments being taken seriously in the context of a global economic system in which many sticks and carrots exist. The value of Copenhagen is threefold – it creates a framework that can be adjusted if and when our projections of what needs to be done prove to have been too optimistic. It also creates a standard which sets expectation for all parties unlike Kyoto. Finally, it offers a context in which unilateral action by nation states diminishes the risks of others worrying that they will lose out economically if they too act alone.

Behavior and Energy Conservation

2009-11-02T21:08:00.001-05:00

An edited version of a memo I recently wrote to someone in the Obama administration:

In the next 20 years we face limited options in reducing our energy use by significantly transforming energy output. Even with the knowledge we have in hand today, significantly reducing the percentage of coal and natural gas will take many decades especially in the light of the projected rise in energy demand. Meanwhile, carbon capture and sequestration has no chance of reaching significant deployment in the near term. As such, in the near term promoting energy efficiency and conservation is not just our best hope but one of our few hopes! That said, how important is the role of the individual citizen in such an effort?
Here I will argue that while changing individual behavior is of value; it is going to be an uphill battle and there are things we can learn from other fields before proceeding. What is more important I will argue, is to change individual attitudes toward the need for collective action of us all as a nation.
The Limits on Behavioral Change: When it comes to energy conservation and efficiency, individual behavior falls into two groups – one off actions, like buying a more efficient appliance and repeated actions, like turning off lights. In both areas, findings of psychology and behavioral economics highlight the significant challenge to promoting such change: i. Significant inelasticity of demand for energy means that price driven change requires large rises in markets that are regulated “for the public good” and subject to political constraints. ii. Even where price begets change at the outset, inurnment to the change overtime combines with habit to reassert old behavior. iii. The overvaluation of money in hand today over savings in the future, forces subsidies to promote energy efficiency upgrades that are extremely costly when done at scale. These are not “killer” objections, but they imply the need to proceed with great care in understanding the range and persistence of conservation efforts that rely in the individual actor acting in isolation.
Alternatives: The problems just alluded to arise from the role of the individual choice in the causal chain that aims to increase efficiency and conservation. But three alternatives sidestep these problems: i. The imposition of universal “upstream” appliance standards. (The most salient success of which has been in the area of home refrigerators.) ii. Exploiting the design environment to bring about changes in behavior subconsciously. (For example, the mere placement of a light switch.) iii. Using elements of smart grids and information networks that can communicate directly with and control (thermostats, appliances etc) in the home environment. But such alternatives, if widely implemented still implicate the individual citizen since they will be hard to defend without citizen acquiescence. Now instead of asking consumer to choose efficient appliances over (upfront) cheaper inefficient ones, we are asking them to acquiesce to their government banning sale of the latter. And instead of asking consumers to turn down air conditioners during peak demand, we might be asking them to cede control to their utility provider.
The Upshot: Winning such acquiescence involves a renegotiation of the social contract. It involves winning citizen support for policies that (in effect) will limit choices that may be preferred in the short run. This is more than “nudging” (a la Sunstein). This is not easy to do. But it is not without precedent. Anti-smoking efforts, seat belt campaigns and above all, social security all involved not just a nudge but the creation of national consensus about the need for us to invite regulation for our own good. The development of an effective climate policy is not simply a technical challenge of science but also a challenge of how to involve the citizens with a sense of ownership over the choices we face.
Recommendations: in the light of these considerations , I would urge:
1. Careful examination of the effectiveness of individual behavioral change programs.
2. Greater use of upstream appliance standards.
3. Use of the design environment to produce energy efficiency and conservation.
4. Mechanisms that directly control the home environment without consumer actions.
5. But above all, an examination of the broader issue of how one can win support of evolving national policy.

EPA Scenarios

2009-10-26T12:06:00.004-04:00

In a report, EPA provides a stark contrast between business as usual, G8 only action and world-wide aciton. The data confirm the stark reality about the prospective role of the Developing World. What follows is (edited) from the report ( Economic Impacts of S.1733: The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act of 2009,October 23, 2009):

In previous analyses, EPA has looked at the impact of U.S. policy combined with the policies assumed for developed and developing countries on global greenhouse gas
concentrations. However, the assumptions used in earlier analyses for what policies other countries would adopt are not consistent with the recent G8/Major Economies Forum goal discussed above. EPA has now analyzed, using the MiniCAM and MAGICC models, how U.S. targets consistent with the President’s FY 2010 budget proposal (14% below 2005 in 2020, and 83% below 2005 in 2050)22 combined with international action consistent with the G8 agreement could affect global CO2e concentrations and temperatures.

EPA presents data on global CO2e concentrations through 2100 assuming a climate sensitivity (CS) of 3.0. with three scenarios. (The CS is the equilibrium temperature response to a doubling of CO2, and a CS of 3.0is deemed the “best estimate” by the IPCC.):

(1) Reference: no climate polices or measures adopted by any countries.

(2) G8 -International Assumptions: consistent with G8 agreement to reduce global emissions to 50% below 2005 levels by 2050. U.S. and other developed countries reduce emissions to 83% below 2005 levels by 2050, and developing countries cap emissions beginning in 2025, and return emissions to 26% below 2005 levels by 2050. All countries hold emissions targets constant after 2050.

(3) Developing Countries After 2050: US and developed countries same as G8 scenario. Developing countries adopt policy in 2050 holding emissions constant at 2050 levels.

In the reference scenario, CO2e concentrations in 2100 would rise to approximately 936 ppm.25 If the U.S. and other developing countries took action to reduce emissions to 83% below 2005 levels by 2050, and developing countries took no action until 2050, then CO2e concentrations in 2100 would rise to approximately 647 ppm. If the G8 goals are met, then CO2e concentrations would rise to approximately 485 ppm in 2100. It should be noted that CO2e concentrations are not stabilized in these scenarios. To prevent concentrations from continuing to rise after 2100, post-2100 GHG emissions would need to be further reduced. For example, stabilization of CO2e concentrations at 485 ppm would require net CO2e emissions to go to zero in the very long run after 2100.

Given the CO2e concentrations for the various scenarios, we can also calculate the observed change in global mean temperature (from pre-industrial time) in 2100 under different climate sensitivities. Assuming the G8 goals (reducing global emissions to 50% below 2005 by 2050) are met, warming in 2100 would be limited to no more than 2 degree Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels under a climate sensitivity of 3.0 or lower.

It should be noted that the temperature change in 2100 in this scenario is not stabilized, so the observed change in global mean temperature in 2100 is not equal to the equilibrium change in global mean temperature. There are two reasons for this. First, while the G8 international goals stabilize global GHG emissions at 50% below 2005 levels, CO2e concentrations and temperature are not stabilized. Determining an equilibrium temperature under any scenario requires additional assumptions about post¬2100 emissions. If emissions remain constant post-2100, CO2e concentrations will continue to rise. Equilibrium temperature would only be achieved after CO2e concentrations are in equilibrium. Second, the inertia in ocean temperatures causes the equilibrium global mean surface temperature change to lag behind the observed global mean surface temperature change by as much as 500 years. Even if CO2e concentrations in 2100 were stabilized, observed temperatures would continue to rise for centuries before the equilibrium were reached.

Continued GHG emissions reductions after 2100 could stabilize CO2e concentrations at the 485 ppm levels achieved in 2100 in the G8 scenario. In order to achieve an equilibrium temperature change of 2 degrees (assuming CS = 3.0), CO2e concentrations must be stabilized below 485 ppm, requiring continued abatement beyond the level needed to stabilize concentrations at 2100 levels. It would be possible to reduce CO2e concentrations after 2100 below 485 ppm by even further reducing GHG emissions in the next century. An ‘overshoot’ scenario such as this would further reduce the equilibrium temperature change, making it possible to achieve the 2 degrees C target even with a climate sensitivity of 3.0.

How much government?

2009-10-19T10:16:00.001-04:00

How heavy is the hand of government going to have to be for use to have any chance of reaching our climate goals? All of the talk of green jobs and growth opportunities associated with de-carbonizing distracts from just how reluctant we all are to make changes on our own. The Economist reports (http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14649058&source=hptextfeature) that the UK Committee on Climate Change (appointed to advise the government on how to meet its targets for greenhouse-gas emissions) has concluded that far too little is being done. “Although recession is holding emissions back, they are dropping at an average annual rate of under 1%, rather than the 2-3% needed” to reach the 2020 reduction targets. “Consumers are not buying energy-efficient appliances or insulating their houses, carmakers are failing to get emissions down and power companies still prefer fossil fuels to greener alternatives. A bracing dose of re-regulation was prescribed: the CCC suggests compulsory emissions caps for cars, feed-in tariffs to help green-power producers and a state-enforced minimum carbon price to encourage nuclear and “clean” coal power stations.” If the same options arise in the U.S., will citizens accept such policies? Not without a lot more work to convince them of the true cost of not doing so.

Collaring cap and trade

2009-10-12T02:19:00.000-04:00

Today’s joint editorial in the NY Times by Senators Kerry and Graham http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/opinion/11kerrygraham.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26refQ3Dopinion&OP=248f9153Q2F8I,Q5C8KyeRZyy2585Q3DQ3Dt8Q5EQ3D8Q5EQ5E8yPkFkyF8Q5EQ5Em,ZZjSZcQ3EcM1Q3E2Mn is good news – a “deal” is evolving. Any such deal is going to involve (a lot of) compromises. It should be no surprise that things like nuclear energy and off shore oil exploration would end up coming into the negotiations. But Kerry and Graham also raise another issue which may seem innocuous but needs to be tracked with care. They write: “finally, we will develop a mechanism to protect businesses — and ultimately consumers — from increases in energy prices. The central element is the establishment of a floor and a ceiling for the cost of emission allowances. This will also safeguard important industries while they make the investments necessary to join the clean-energy era. We recognize there will be short-term transition costs associated with any climate change legislation, costs that can be eased. But we also believe strongly that the long-term gain will be enormous.” The use of such a price “collar” in a cap and trade system has been much discussed as a way of smoothing price changes and avoiding dissociative price shocks. But, and it is a big but, to speak of such collars as a way of “protect businesses — and ultimately consumers — from increases in energy prices” would be completely self-defeating if the goal of a cap and trade system is to use prices to limit carbon output! There simply is no free lunch here. And the fact of the matter is that to get the changes in carbon output we need prices will have to go up substantially above and beyond the push from increasing demand – especially as competition for energy (especially oil for petroleum) from China and India. Now maybe the talk of protecting businesses and consumers from increases in energy prices is just talk – designed to grease the way for a bill to pass. The bill can be far from perfect. But what it needs to do is put in place a mechanism that can reduce carbon even if its initial targets turn out to be far too low – like the current 2020 target in the House bill. The targets can be changed, as can the allowances under cap and trade. But to do all that, the collar mechanism needs to be a real collar – one that moves up with prices. In doing so, it can’t protect consumers from price increases, nor should it. All it can and should do is to smooth the upward path of those prices.

EPA moves

2009-10-05T01:59:00.001-04:00

EPA’s announcement that it is going to act with or without Congress to regulate large carbon emitters is good news – good because it creates an incentive for the Senate to act and good, because if the Senate does not act, at least we get some movement in addressing the regulation of carbon output. But it is important not to overstate the limitation of this sort of move. In his article on the announcement the NYT writes: "Ms. Jackson described the proposal as a common-sense rule tailored to apply to only the largest facilities — those that emit at least 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year — which are responsible for nearly 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/science/earth/01epa.html?scp=6&sq=epa%20climate%20regulation&st=cse). But that conflates carbon regulation with greenhouse gas regulation of which non-carbon output by agriculture constitutes a significant percentage. Even looking just at carbon, I am skeptical based on data from the Department of Energy for 2007 – see http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html. Looking just at CO2, the really worrisome figure is petroleum which constitutes 2.5gt of the 6 gt total and most which (2 gt) is used in transportation. It will be harder to regulate greenhouse gas output by just attending to the largest facilities. Like it or not, regulation will have to have a much further reach.

The bad news and the good news

2009-09-28T11:49:00.000-04:00

President Hu Jintao’s speech to the UN this week offered standard fair in on one hand when he pledged to “increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 15 percent by 2020”. That is 15% of a moving target as China’s overall energy consumption is growing at a massive rate. On the otherhand he also said this: “We will endeavor to cut carbon dioxide emissions — (inaudible) — GDP by a notable margin by 2020 from the 2005 level” (according to the transcript of his speech provided by the Federal News Service). This is notable because for the first time, we have a declaration of a FIXED target and one that involves a reduction from current and planned levels of output even if the target is the 2005 level itself – which was 5.3 gigatons (billion tons) of CO2. That said, stabilizing at 450 ppm of CO2 is commonly assumed to require a worldwide cut from current levels of 28 gigatons to 18 gigatons. Assuming a world population stabilizing at 9 billion people with China at 1.5 billion, the per capita allocation for China would be 3 gigatons. That is below 5.3 gigatons by a really “notable margin”! There is also the worrisome use of the word ‘endeavor’ in his statement.

Holding my breath

2009-09-21T19:23:00.001-04:00

Reuters reports: “The U.N. climate chief said on Monday he expects China to become a "world leader" on climate change after President Hu Jintao announces policy measures on Tuesday. Yvo De Boer said he expects Hu to announce, in a speech to a U.N. climate change summit in New York, a series of measures "that will take Chinese emissions very significantly away from where they would have been and are."” But….. listen carefully to see if there is any commitment to ABSOLUTE levels of carbon output as opposed to decreasing the proportion of it. The latter is only equivalent to the former if you bracket GDP growth – which is currently running, and planned to run, at 8-9% a year. That rate of growth produces massive compound increases in GDP over time and with it, energy needed and associated carbon output unless you grow with “clean” energy. But here is (yet another) inconvenient truth – 80% of current energy is fossil based. The idea that current energy (let alone the energy to fuel growth) can be provided on a clean basis can be produced at the needed scale and be deployed on any politically realistic timetable is a pure fantasy.

Fairness – again

2009-09-14T13:30:00.002-04:00

The World needs to plan massive cut backs in current and prospective greenhouse gas output. Most people agree that fairness demands an equal per capita share even as the details of history and prospective population need to be taken into account. On this basis, the United States gets about 5% of the world limit which means about a 90% cut from current levels. But there is another way to approach this issue. Pacala et al. (in PNAS)argue that we should look at who is currently exceeding their allocation on an individual basis and generate country obligations for cut backs on that basis. Doing things that way makes hardly any difference in the case of the U.S. But the approach makes a big difference for almost everyone else. For almost every country has SOME people who are using more than their fair share. Not unreasonably, Pacala et al. think that fairness is an individual matter and so that is where to locate the calculus – even though they are willing to also look at some sort of offsetting consideration for the very poor. So a country with rich people who are above their fair share, ought to be able to take into account the fact that it has lots of people who are far below their fair share and need to benefit from economic (and energy) growth to reach some minimum level of welfare. But once you recognize this fact, the logic of such an approach begins to dissolve. For there is a strong defense to be made about fairness assigned by way of national allocations – for better or worse, nation states are the units that enter into agreements on allocational issues globally. How they then divide their allocation internally is deeply relevant to different development strategies. One thing is clear though – all countries need some method of capital accumulation and that usually entails some inequities – be it robber barons or state capitalism. As with capital so with carbon usage.

CCS in China

2009-09-07T11:29:00.003-04:00

Anyone who imagines that deployment of carbon capture and sequestration can allow for Developing World growth and needed restriction on greenhouse gasses should pay close attention to a new report on China. In "The Real Drivers of Carbon Capture and Storage at Scale in China and Implications for Climate Policy", Richard K. Morse, Varun Rai, and Gang He. Morse et al. argue that, most importantly that: ".. the primary driver of current CCS projects in China is the strategic development of its energy security agenda, with particular emphasis on diversity of energy supply, reliable and cheap electricity, and the development of domestic intellectual property for energy technologies. Unfortunately, many analysts who are rushing to declare that CCS has arrived in China are confusing these motives for an enthusiastic embrace of CCS for purposes of large scale CO2 emissions reductions. A crucial distinction must then be made: while these energy security drivers are likely to foster the development China’s CCS demonstration efforts(as we are likely to witness in the near term), they do not translate into incentives to deploy CCS at scale. In fact, as we argue later, CCS at scale will place a heavy burden on China’s coal supply chain and is more likely to harm China’s energy security than to help it. The only manner in which CCS would concretely serve energy security needs would be if China were subject to a stringent greenhouse gas reduction regime at some future time, in which case CCS could facilitate the use of domestically-available coal (for either power or for transport using coal-toliquids technology). However, we argue that such a scenario is likely many years from being a reality, mainly because China has no core interest in agreeing to and enforcing such a regime on itself until it has developed economically to the point where a large domestic constituency values climate change action as much as rapid economic growth." For the full report, go to: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1463572

Second Thoughts

2009-08-31T16:33:00.001-04:00

Two weeks ago ( on August 10), I ended the long slog through a 10 part argument (The Core Narrative of Climate Change) by arguing that in the end, my worries about divergent interests between the Developing World and the Developed World might be misplaced. I argued that high growth trajectories failed to take in to account the effects of the temperature gain on GNP. GNP is an external input in these calculations. I then relied on a paper by In a very interesting paper, Melissa Dell , Benjamin F. Jones, and Benjamin A. Olken (“Climate Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century”) that looks at the historical record to argue that a 1 degree centigrade rise in temperature reduces economic growth by an average of 1.1% but only in poor countries. I argued that using Asian figures in the IPPC scenarios, the difference between A1B and A2 by 2100 is about $100 trillion. (A1B is $207.3 trillion by 2100 while B1 is $105.9 trillion.) Both start the century at $2.7 trillion. For A1B the implied growth rate is 4.4%. So it be 3.3% less the “cost” of global warming of 1 degree more than the B1 scenario. So the projected GNP of Asia would be $69 trillion which is $35 trillion less than the B1 figure. So it seemed that the cost of climate change to output seems to outweigh the gain from more aggressive scenarios. Not so fast!! All of this only applies to poor countries. GDP growth rates for rich countries are not really affected by such changes according to the M.I.T. research – they are less agricultural and more flexible economically. But here is the rub: on the projected growth trajectory for Asia both China and India will move from “poor” to “rich” long before 2050. If and when that happens, at least on the basis of this research, they won’t have offsetting losses to GDP from climate change that would undermine their gains from an aggressive growth trajectory. So, at least on the basis of self-interest, the conclusion I drew two weeks ago is wrong for them. And they are the ones whose output matters most in the Developing World!

China's Plan

2009-08-24T08:02:00.000-04:00

Chris Buckley reported (in Reuters last week) that top policy advisers in China have recommended “firm targets to limit greenhouse gas emissions so they peak around 2030” in their “2050 China Energy and C02 Emissions Report”. It would be a big step forward if China’s political leadership were to accept the principle of firm targets over the current commitment to simply improve energy intensity without reference to the growth of GDP. They will only do so, if the authors of this report can convince them that low carbon pathways are compatible with China’s growth targets. Be that as it may, a look at the recommended targets themselves is sobering when you translate them into stabilization levels of atmospheric CO2. The report projects Chinese output of CO2 in 2050 as 3.47 gigatons of Carbon on a business as usual model. The alternative low carbon path puts output at 2.41 GtC. Finally the authors pose an “enhanced” low carbon path that generates 1.4 GtC. So far so good. But now consider the following calculus: it has been generally thought that to stabilize at 450ppm, world CO2 output needs to be reduced from current levels to 18 GtCO2 or 4.9 GtC. Assume we were to do that on the basis of an equal per capita share based on the projected world population in 2050 – roughly 9 billion people. China has declared a goal of a stable population of 1.6 billion which is 17.7% of 9 billion. On an equal share per capita, its allocation would thus be .87 GtC – far below its enhanced low carbon path. What happens if you run the argument in reverse? If you start with the enhanced low carbon path of 1.4 GtC as an equal per capita allocation of 17.7% of the population, that gives you an equivalent world output of 9 GtC (33 GTCo2) – which is more than our current output which we know to be unsustainable! Are U.S. plans much better? Assume the U.S. stabilizes at 350 million in 2050 or 3.89% of the world population. Then its allocation will be .186 GtC which would be roughly equivalent to a 90% reduction over 2006 output levels.

The Core Narrative of Climate Change - 10

2009-08-17T13:57:00.000-04:00

Suppose the World proceeds through this century on a high growth trajectory albeit with a “balanced” energy portfolio. On the IPCC scenarios, we end up with the following:
Economic wealth is $528.5 trillion.
CO2 output is 60 gigatons of Carbon per year.
Temperature rise is 2.8 degrees Celsius.
While on the “green” scenario the equivalent figures are:
Economic wealth is $334 trillion.
CO2 output is 30 gigatons of Carbon per year.
Temperature rise is 1.8 degrees Celsius.
So, we gain almost 200 trillion in wealth for a 1 degree rise in temperature as the price. But these projections fail to take in to account the effects of the temperature gain on GNP. GNP is an external input in these calculations. In a very interesting paper, Melissa Dell , Benjamin F. Jones, and Benjamin A. Olken (“Climate Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century”) look at the historical record to argue that a 1 degree centigrade rise in temperature reduces economic growth by an average of 1.1% but only in poor countries. Let’s see how this works for Asia. If we look to Asia’s projected figures in the IPPC scenarios, the difference between A1B and A2 by 2100 is about $100 trillion. (A1B is $207.3 trillion by 2100 while B1 is $105.9 trillion.) Both start the century at $2.7 trillion. Let’s focus on A1B – what is the implied growth rate? It is 4.4%. So what would it be less the “cost” of global warming of 1 degree more than the B1 scenario? 3.3%. So what the projected GNP of Asia on a 3.3% rate rather than a 4.4% rate? The result is $69 trillion. That is $35 trillion less than the B1 figure!
(Note: I could have calculated the 1 degree cost for B1 and a 2 degree cost for A1B to get the same resulting difference.)This is good news! The cost of climate change to output seems to outweigh the gain from more aggressive scenarios.

The Core Narrative of Climate Change – 9

2009-08-10T20:15:00.001-04:00

How much GNP does a country sacrifice for avoiding climate change? We saw a partial answer by using the IPCC scenarios discussed a few weeks ago. (See “The Core Narrative … - 5” below.) The choice becomes A1 versus a low growth family of scenarios (the B family). The contrast now becomes striking when you ask how much economic growth would the Developing World have to sacrifice. Here are the IPCC figures for projected World GNP: A1B: $528.5 trillion, B1: $334 trillion. But that is not the end of the story. This figure does not take into account the costs of climate change itself. But can we arrive at an overall calculus? Through the IPCC, we have a rough accounting of the number of people living in low-lying coastal zone as a proportion of total population. Through Oxfam, we have the same for those more generally vulnerable to the effects of climate change. But that does not really help. Before we consider these populations, we need to ask this: is there some general way to calculate the costs of climate change that we can deduct from the GNP figures above. That is to say, if A1B yields a $194.5 trillion dollar advantage over B1, what is the associated climate cost?

The Core Narrative of Climate Change – 8

2009-08-03T16:40:00.001-04:00

Why might the hypothetical I raised last week turn out to be real? That is, that I am in fact better off @ $2000 relative to other more prevalent “stressors” in my environment (level of nutrition, health care I can afford, education I can afford etc) AND that improvement is greater than the net negative climate effect. It depends. The effects of climate change depend very much on where you live as well as how you live. Obviously, if you live in low-lying coastal regions, rising sea levels may affect you directly. Otherwise the effects will be indirect. Climate’s effects will be primarily experienced by way of existing stressors that are exacerbated. Can we get a handle on how to quantify this? In doing so, we can pose this as a national rather than individual issue. Here is what we need to answer:
How much GNP does a country sacrifice for avoiding climate change?
But in answering that we need to know how much does climate change costs in terms of welfare?

The Core Narrative of Climate Change – 7

2009-07-27T21:34:00.000-04:00

Here, I wrote last week, is a truth that few dare to speak – growth may pit the interests of the poor in the Developing World against others. Not others in the Developed World but in the Developing World itself. If that is the case we need to know the numbers and also ask if the numbers should count. But wait! Doesn’t everyone loose when it comes to climate change – rich and poor? Not necessarily. Let’s being by considering individuals … albeit hypothetical individuals. Suppose my household economy is improved only by causing climate change – because of the economy-energy function. Suppose I am net worse off in the new climate even though I am richer. (eg. $1000 pa in 450ppm versus $2000 in 550ppm.) But that is not the end of the story IF I am better off @ $2000 relative to other more prevalent “stressors” in my environment (level of nutrition, health care I can afford, education I can afford etc) AND that improvement is greater than the net negative climate effect. So, for example, the probability of my offspring reaching a productive age, in my $2000 pa household may be improved even though it is associated with higher ppm which have adverse effect on that outcome. Might this hypothetical turn out to be real?

The Core Narrative of Climate Change – 6

2009-07-20T16:41:00.000-04:00

How much economic growth would the Developing World have to sacrifice if there is no technology transfer solution that allows for intended growth at the projected rate AND green energy? Using the IPCC figures, about 25% less growth by the end of the century. But wait a minute:
1. Why think there is no such technology transfer solution?
2. And even if there is none, if fossil fueled economic growth begets climate change, why think the Developed World would be better off?
Here is an overview of where I think the answers lie:
1. The problem of green energy is not just a matter of who pays. Nor is it just a matter of overall energy demand and supply. As the Developing world grows, both solar and wind energy will be of limited value without massive storage capacity to provide for uninterrupted supply. Moreover, even bracketing that problem, if we look at the timetable for growth and associated energy demand, keeping up with that timetable for renewable energy growth in capacity is a central challenge.
2. If fossil fuel (or balanced growth) drives growth, we need a model to estimate how much climate change will undermine the rise in GDP or even overwhelm it. We have good short term estimates of the effects on the poor. But what we need are long term estimates for the Developing World as a whole. Here we have a truth that few dare to speak – growth may pit the interests of the poor in the Developing World against others. Not others in the Developed World but in the Developing World itself. If that is the case we need to know the numbers and also ask if the numbers should count.

The Core Narrative of Climate Change – 5

2009-07-13T16:44:00.003-04:00

Last week’s focus was on whether can provide enough clean energy of the right kind given the growth projections for the Developing World. The IPCC sidesteps this issue by providing a number of scenarios for the rest of this century. The so-called A1 family assume population growth slows but growth is high. That is then combined with a number of associated energy assumptions – coal and oil (A1F), renewable (A1T) and a “balanced” portfolio (A1B). A1B produces enough greenhouse gasses to push all the way to 650 ppm and a 3.5 (degrees Celsius) temperature rise by the end of the century unlike A1T which keeps things in bounds at 550 ppm and 3 degrees. So fine, let’s just plan on doing A1T whoever ends up paying for it. But the problem is that A1T is a thought experiment! It is a hypothetical scenario that assumes the technology is available to provide clean energy in the right form to (literally) fuel the assumed rate of economic growth. Absent the scenario being real, the choice becomes A1 versus a low growth family of scenarios (the B family). The contrast now becomes striking when you ask how much economic growth would the Developing World have to sacrifice. Here are the IPCC figures for projected World gnp: A1B: $528.5 trillion, B1: $334 trillion.

The Core Narrative of Climate Change – 4

2009-07-06T10:52:00.000-04:00

Picking up the thread of 3 weeks ago, whether or not you view to promise of technology transfer as buying you more climate saving than the low carbon plans or essential to them, the key unexamined assumption is this: is the technology available to achieve these goals whoever is paying for it? There are two issues here: 1. Is there enough of it? 2. Is it of the right kind?

As Claude Mandil, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said in May 2004, ‘‘In the absence of strong government policies, we project that the worldwide use of oil in transport will nearly double between 2000 and 2030, leading to a similar increase in greenhouse gas emissions’’ (IEA, 2004).

Significantly, between 2003 and 2030, over 1400GW of new coal capacity will be built. These plants would commit the planet to total carbon dioxide emissions of some 500 billion metric tons over their lifetime, unless ‘‘they are backfit with carbon capture equipment at some time during their life,’’ as David Hawkins, Director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center told the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce in June 2003. ‘‘To put this number in context, it amounts to half the estimated total cumulative carbon emissions from all fossil fuel use globally over the past 250 years!’’ (Hawkins, 2003)
(
Note: I have misplaced where I filched these quotes from – but I think it was from the Center for American Progress.)

You can dream about renewable energy, or hybrid cars but these really are dreams – at these levels of deployment. What about carbon capture and sequestration? Even if you think this can work – and I do think it can work - it is one think to build a demonstration plant and then deploy at scale on new plants. “Backfitting” raises a quite different set of problems – not just of technical feasibility but just how well such plants can be expected to be run, to put it tactfully, given the variety of oversight regimes in place across the World.

A Moment Worthy of Reflection

2009-06-29T08:29:00.000-04:00

House passage of the Waxman-Markey bill last Friday deserves a moment of quiet reflection. For anyone who has followed the internal politics, it is hard to convey how dicey this looked a few months ago. The bill is far from perfect – the 2020 target is too low and too many permits are assigned gratis. But none of that matters. If something like this bill survives the Senate, it will be good enough to set the United States on a unilateral path to de-carbonization. Never mind that the levels will likely turn out to be too conservative. With a basic mechanism in place to internalize the costs of carbon, as reality sets in we can always ratchet up the targets. And the same is true of the rest of the world. This bill, if it becomes law before the end of the year, may set a low bar for the rest of the world to sign on to. But here too, once there is consensus on a way forward, it will be much easier to push collectively for a steeper rate of de-carbonization. Easier, but by no means easy. There has been a Faustian deal in selling this legislation – that it will be accompanied by economic growth. That may be true in the short run. But in the long run, internalizing the true cost of carbon will extract a high price and an uneven one at that, as some sectors of economy will be much more affected than others. For developed economies there will be enough surplus wealth to ease the transition for those most affected. The Developing World is a wholly different story. There the costs (in terms of lowered rates of economic development) will be much larger and hard to offset than most are willing to admit. As such, the real challenge may not be so much getting an agreement as much as sticking to it.

Interlude – Reflection on the National Academies of Sciences meeting on Geoengineering.

2009-06-22T09:49:00.000-04:00

As I have written elsewhere I do NOT think the issues of geo are primarily ethical (in any sense different from ethical issues in rest of science and technology) as much as they are methodological.
The methodological issues arise to the extent intervention is planetary wide– be it albedo geo or carbon capture – AND sub-scale experimentation also has to be planetary wide as well.
Under these circumstances the potential costs of “unknown unknowns” are quite different from lab or limited “field” experiments.
As such, the burden of proof is for researchers to show that we know enough about the atmospheric (and ocean) systems to delimit the range of risk OR that we know enough to project from sub-scale intervention to full scale intervention.
I am not saying such arguments can’t be made – but they have not been laid on the table as yet. I suspect we do know enough about both the atmosphere and the ocean (based on theory, history and volcanic activity) to have high confidence that there would be no large scale catastrophic weird non-linearities.
As such, if that were right one could make an extrapolation from sub-scale to scale in strength or extrapolate in time.
That said, none of this covers issues of social, economic, cultural or agricultural effects. But I doubt these are areas in which the worst case scenarios would be deal breakers – at least when it comes to sub-scale experimentation.
Of course, to the extent that there are non planetary wide geo options they are to be vastly preferred because one can limit risks associated with unknowns in experimental stages.
On moral hazard – this is something about which there is research, we ought not to proceed on the basis of intuition or anecdote. That said, from a policy point of view, I think it is as important to find out if sulfur injection works technically just to take it off the table for policy makers as a fix as to leave it on.
Finally, it is a mistake to view geo as the first time we have engaged in an intentional planetary wide intervention. For example, killing off smallpox was just such an intervention and done deliberately. If you think the later was justified (and most do), you need something more to make the argument that geo is morally impermissible merely in virtue of our hubris.
We are at a fork in the road in which we need to de-carbonize. Can we do that with less risk and damage if we do it with geo or without? That is the crucial comparison class.

The Core Narrative of Climate Change – 3

2009-06-15T14:18:00.000-04:00

The Financial Times (June 13th 2009, p. 4) outlines part of the deal: “In return for funding … [technology transfer] … rich countries want legally binding commitments from developing countries that they will “deviate from business as usual”. That is, curb their emissions so they do not reach the level expected if economic growth continues along a high-carbon path.” But what counts as business as usual? Fancy counterfactual worries aside, you might interpret this within the taxonomy of the IPCC models – as A1F1 – that is, low population growth, rapid technological development and unconstrained reliance on fossil fuels. China and India already have so-called “low carbon” development plans in place. But in the case of China (India’s is not specific enough), “low” means restraining carbon for stabilization at 550ppm (assuming a fair share per capita output basis) and that already assumes technology transfer – at least in the case of India. But whether or not you view to promise of technology transfer as buying you more climate saving than the low carbon plans or essential to them, the key unexamined assumption is this: is the technology available to achieve these goals whoever is paying for it? There are two issues here: 1. Is there enough of it? 2. Is it of the right kind?

The Core Narrative of Climate Change – 2

2009-06-08T21:12:00.001-04:00

Current discussion about international climate change is in part a dance about who goes first. It is also a dance about who will follow. The Developed World is expected to go first (at a credible level) to establish its bona fides and, then, and only then, will the Developing World follow. Will? Or might? And either way, follow in equal measure or if not, how much? Suppose China signals the United States to give enough assurances that it will follow, and follow enough, for the United States to decide to go first, and first at a credible level. What is “going first” going to involve? It has been generally assumed that, whatever else, it is going to involve massive technology transfer to the Developing World as a way of offsetting the United States over production of carbon. The only way to seriously reduce carbon output in the United States is to buy the shares of other countries. As their energy output increases, the carbon they could put out, as within their fair share (on, for example, a per capita allotment) gets produced by clean energy that the Developed World pays for. In the comforting graphs people like to draw, the Developed World carbon output trends downward, prompted by domestic measures, and is offset by a slowed upward trend in the Developing World output - slowed by technology transfer. And if all is to end well, these two trends will sum to a total carbon output in 2050that yields a stable level of atmospheric carbon at 450ppm. So what is wrong with this picture?

The Core Narrative of Climate Change

2009-06-01T05:33:00.002-04:00

Debates about climate change are governed and shaped by a core narrative that has two key elements: 1. We (or depending on your perspective, They, the Developed World) caused the problem. 2. They (or, We, the Developing World) are going to be the one's to suffer. Over the next few months I am going to be writing about this narrative and its flaws - for it is only correct in a very narrow and misleading sense. Who did what, I am going to argue, is much more complex and, to some extent, beside the point. Who is going to suffer, also makes for a much more complex story but here the details are far from being beside the point - they are going to be central. Central to an argument that relying on this core narrative is not going to get us where we want to be as far as limiting greenhouse gas output.

Be Careful What You Wish For

2009-05-25T20:59:00.001-04:00

“Rich nations should cut their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels as part of a new global climate change pact, China said on Thursday, spelling out its stance ahead of negotiations,” reported Reuters last week. Meanwhile, US legislation looks like (at best) the goal will be a 17% cut over 2005 levels by 2020. That is quite a wide gap! Suppose we start with the budget we have to “spend” on carbon before we reach (say) 450ppm and take history into account. (After that let’s assume we proceed on a fair share per capita basis necessary to maintain carbon output at steady state.) Then (at least by my calculation) the Developed World has already used up its budget in toto!! So on that basis, China’s position seems quite generous. But here is the rub. If we are going to play be these accounting rules, China’s own “low carbon plan” will very soon outstrip its allocation. Suppose we bracket history, and allocate a per capita share of that budget. The result is a little more generous to the Developed World but the message is basically the same. As I have written before, if you look at the prospective carbon output of the Developing World over the next 50 years. On a business as usual basis, it is going to swamp the Developed World’s output, both historic and prospective. As such, calling for drastic Developed World cuts is fine and well. But be careful what you ask for. If the same policy is applied fairly, the Developing World will have to drastically revise its own growth plans.

Geoengineering and Scalability

2009-05-18T00:30:00.001-04:00

I have colleagues who are volcanologists. Volcanoes dump a lot of sulfur into the stratosphere when they explode. My colleagues claim these explosions provide empirical confirmation for our climate models. And so they claim we can rely on these models to predict, including what would happen if we put sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to decrease the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth. Rely on them how much? This seems to me like a crucial question. For otherwise, all we have to go on would be the results of experiments we might conduct at low rates of insertion from which might try to extrapolate to high rates of insertion. But extrapolate on what basis? Using what model? Volcanic explosion have the virtue of being really big. So they approach the scale of insertion we would need – but they are of short duration. Extrapolating to what would happen with insertion of long duration is what we seek. But here too we are faced with the same dilemma – on what basis? Using what model?

More on Luck

2009-05-11T02:34:00.000-04:00

We like to think we should only be held to account for what we had control over. And how can I have control over that which I am ignorant of and could not even have known if I had wanted to? (Although when you and I do the same thing and by pure luck, your act has consequences that mine does not, things get complicated. A child runs in front of your car not mine. We were both driving with reasonable vigilance. For better or worse, you killed the child. It seems extreme to say that you have no moral responsibility at all. And yet your act and mine we identical.) But here we are not worrying about moral culpability but a fair distribution. How we may feel about this may turn out to be a function of the detail:

• You and I share a well which we assume has an unlimited supply of water. I used more than you. I like children, you don’t. I used the water to grow crops to feed my children. Now a fair share that looks backward as well as forward will not yield enough for my family. Our plans we paid in good faith and upending them will have dire consequences. That seems unfair.
• You and I share a well which we assume has an unlimited supply of water. I used more than you. I had a swimming pool and fountains you did not. A fair share looking forward alone will leave my pool empty – so be it. But a fair share looking backwards will hurt more than that. As long as I am guaranteed some supply for my basic needs that does not seem unfair. I enjoyed my pool. Now it’s your turn.

What is the difference? In both cases, if I had known the truth about the water supply I might have acted differently – had fewer children or not built the pool. But what is done is done. Yet in one case, the plans I laid can be aborted. The pool just stands empty. The children are another matter.

• You and I share a well which we assume has an unlimited supply of water. You used less than me. Your interests lay elsewhere. You could have used more. You simply chose not to. Here including a backward looking claim seems gratuitous.
• You and I share a well which we assume has an unlimited supply of water. You used less than me. You wanted to do more, but you lacked the money to invest in irrigation equipment to extend your fields. Now you have the funds to invest and you want to make up for lost time.

Of course here the difference is that in the second case you had a plan, albeit a frustrated plan. In the first you simply squandered an opportunity. I benefited from your situation in both cases.

If you share my intuitions in these cases, they show how luck is not dispositive. When it comes to a fair distribution, whether history matters or not may depend on the details.

Luck

2009-05-04T16:55:00.001-04:00

You and I share a well. We both thought it would never run dry. I used a lot more water than you did. Now we discover it is going dry. We need to proceed with care, limiting our use. The well reaches an underground lake that is fed by springs. We have been drawing at a rate that outpaces how fast the springs replenish it. So be it. But who will get how much? I make the following proposal: let each have an equal share going forward, be it per household or per person. You object. You have used a lot less than me over the years. You think that should be part of the accounting. “Yes,” you say, “let there be a fair share, but looking back as well as forward.” But until now, neither of knew the well might run dry. The supply seemed inexhaustible. So my using more than you did not seem to matter to either of us. The idea of a “fair share” makes no sense if what is to be shared is inexhaustible. But it wasn’t inexhaustible, we just thought it was. Should ignorance mater here? Does it make any difference? True, ignorance is said to be no excuse in the Law. But in the case of the Law these is something to be known that it was my responsibility to learn about. Here we had an unknown. Even though neither of us realized it, I got an unfair advantage. Unfair or just lucky? Suppose we say it was luck. I happened to be in the right place at the right time to make use of more of the water than you. Does that luck count in the moral equation of who should get what going forward?

A Hypothetical?

2009-04-27T04:05:00.001-04:00

Suppose my household economy is improved only by causing climate change – because of the economy-energy function. Suppose I am net-net worse off in the new climate even though I am richer. (E.g. $1000 p.a in 450 ppm versus $2000 in 550 ppm.) But that is not the end of the story IF I am better off @ $2000 relative to other more prevalent “stressors” in my environment (level of nutrition, health care I can afford, education I can afford etc) AND that improvement is greater than the net negative climate effect. So, for example, the probability of my offspring reaching a productive age, in my $2000 p.a. household may be improved even though it is associated with higher ppm which have adverse effect on that outcome. This hypothetical got me thinking about our failure to take differing risk-reward perspectives into account in thinking about how people stand relative to acceptable ppm CO2 levels. But is this hypothetical reflected in actuality?

India

2009-04-20T18:19:00.000-04:00

In the Washington Post April 13th, Rama Lakshmi reports that “ Scientists at India's National Geophysical Research Institute released preliminary findings from ongoing government-funded research that seeks to inject carbon dioxide into the basalt rock formation called the Deccan Traps, which is about 60 million years old. S. Nirmal Charan, a senior scientist at the institute, said researchers wanted to determine whether carbon dioxide can be trapped for tens of thousands of years within the basalt. He said more simulated laboratory tests are underway, but initial results show the process to be "environmentally benign."” This is significant for a couple of reasons. The first is that the research is (so far) positive. The second is that the research is being done at all. India’s public position to date has been one of passive skepticism about carbon sequestration. “Let the Developed World prove it is safe first” has been the mantra. That is a position that carries the likelihood for long term procrastination. For even if carbon sequestration is researched outside India first, who knows if it will conform to the standard of certainty that might be set – let alone a demand for the research to then and only then be replicated “at home”. Doing it oneself has a way of changing the frame. In doing so, it allows for a debate first about what would constituent success and it allows that test to be done where it counts – locally. India has too much coal and too much need for energy to not do this research.

Congress or EPA?

2009-04-13T10:37:00.000-04:00

The much anticipated congressional action on greenhouse gas legislation may go nowhere this year – a victim of other priorities and the allocation of political capital. At the same time EPA is moving ahead with CO2 regulations using a recent ruling that the gas could be judged harmful. There has been much commentary that this is second best but I am not so sure. Whatever the United States does now is simply an overture to the post-Kyoto international negotiations which will have to come back to the Congress for ratification. All that matters now is for the U.S. to establish its bona fides by acting unilaterally. EPA is just as good a vehicle to do that as the Congress. Maybe better. Unlike the Congress, EPA is not subject to the push and pull of regional interests that can force self-interested compromises. But more important, EPA has come to be accepted as a kind of public health agency and public health agency have a protected political status. We tend to accept the regulations they visit on us as for our own good even if they hurt in the short run. Politicians know this and understand that doing unpopular things through such agencies gives them some protection from the political wrath of their constituents.

Changing China

2009-04-06T15:53:00.004-04:00

ChinaDialogue has just published an important article in cooperation with Rutgers CSP that deserves close reading - http://www.csp.rutgers.edu/csp-posts/ccinc.php. Hu Angang is one of Chinaʼs best-known economists. He is professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University and the director of the Centre for China Study, a leading policy think-tank. Hu has worked as the chief editor for China Studies Report, a circulated reference for senior officials. I say all of this because it is not just the opinion voiced in the article that is important but who is expressing it. Here is what deserves attention: heretofore, China's climate policy has been posed in terms of increasing energy efficiency per $ of GDP. That may be a virtue but with a planned growth rate of 8% in GDP over the coming two decades, any gain in efficiency gets quickly dwarfed by the massive increase in the economy. Here Hu Angang is calling for a change to bring China into line with the rest of the major greenhouse gas emitters in framing goals in absolute terms. And while one may take issue with the figures he sets, that should not mask the significance of what he is proposing as well as the fact that it is he who is doing so.

History

2009-03-30T12:58:00.000-04:00

ChinaDialogue reports: A top Chinese state think tank – the State Council Development Research Centre -- has proposed a global greenhouse-gas trading plan to reflect the varying historic emissions of rich and poor nations, indicating deepening discussion in Beijing about climate-change policy, Reuters reported. Researchers from the centre presented the plan in the current issue of the Economic Research Journal. The think tank recommends setting emissions rights for each country based on historic accumulation, and then allowing nations to trade portions of those rights in an international market. The plan would draw China and other developing countries into clearer obligations to curtail greenhouse gases in the long term. However, it would give them larger per-capita emissions quotas than rich countries, reflecting the developing world’s historically low emissions and “right to develop”. All countries should develop a “historic account” of past emissions, according to the plan. That account would be used to measure whether current emissions fall above or below appropriate levels calculated from population, accumulated emissions and total global-reduction objectives. How countries keep their own future emissions entitlements within agreed levels would be left for governments to decide. Countries could trade emissions rights, on condition that they eliminate their “emissions rights deficit” by a set date – for example, 2050.
How much history should matter depends on some thorny conceptual issues. First, how should we treat the rate of re-absorption of CO2? Depending on where that figure is set, you need to calculate how much of old CO2 output is still in the atmosphere. But even if CO2 put up in (say) 1800 is largely gone from the atmosphere, its effects on ocean warming are not – that has a much longer life. Then there is the issue of population. Suppose you add up historic use. Do you then allocate shares based on population now, in the future (when) or the actual population at the time of output. The United States may be 5% of the World’s population now, but in 1800 it was much less. Finally, in making such calculations, should you take the was figures for usage, or calculate use age above basic needs? Historically, the (now) Developing World has produced about 50% of total CO2. But nearly all of that was used merely to survive.

What If?

2009-03-23T17:25:00.002-04:00

In Climate Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century (www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2009/retrieve.php?pdfid=218), Melissa Dell, Benjamin F. Jones, and Benjamin A. Olken report: “Our main results show large, negative effects of higher temperatures on growth, but only in poor countries. In poorer countries, we estimate that a 1◦C rise in temperature in a given year reduced economic growth in that year by about 1.1 percentage points. In rich countries, changes in temperature had no discernable effect on growth. Changes in precipitation had no substantial effects on growth in either poor or rich countries. We find broadly consistent results across a wide range of alternative specifications.” Suppose that is right and right for more than 1 degree. Then does the West have anything to gain by changing its behavior? Societies that can adapt to the effects of climate change will be favored, and those are largely in the Developed World, which has the advantages, resources and the geographical location. But to reap such benefits such an argument has to be taken to the extreme. Only if the climate crisis eliminated the populations of the Developing World would the Developing World reap those advantages by living in a world with a radically diminished population. I would like to provide an economic argument based on the interdependence of the world economy to undermine this argument. But I am not confident that such an argument can be made. A moral argument can be made, but I am not confident that such an argument has much practical force. Instead I argue that it is implausible to think the Developed World could isolate itself from the turmoil that catastrophic climate change would produce in the Developing World. Short term security considerations will trump any long term analysis.

A Lecture on Conflicting Valuation

2009-03-16T16:08:00.008-04:00

Here is a webcast of a lecture I gave at Princeton a few weeks ago in which I argued against an "ethics" approach to climate and in favor of an approach based on conflicting valuation: http://web.princeton.edu/sites/pei/ECC/index.htm

My Lead Foot

2009-03-09T05:51:00.001-04:00

I drive with a lead foot – I waste gas accelerating too fast from a stop and I also break too hard as well. Reform of driving habits is perhaps the easiest and most effective to improve auto efficiency and reduce CO2 output in this sector. I have tried to unlearn my habits to drive like a little old lady (or geezer). But old habits die hard. Some modern planes are design to over-ride pilot action when the computer deems those actions dangerous. Why not design a car that does something like that? Program the car to drive as if I were an old geezer and just ignore my lead feet. Suppose a car came with a number of different “performance” profiles. Just make the default the most fuel efficient and most people will choose that one by default. But what if I need performance – in an emergency? One could build in overrides that take advantage of our reflexive actions under duress – like squeezing the steering wheel.

Puzzling Polls

2009-03-02T08:55:00.000-05:00

In a recent poll we did (funded by PSEG and designed by my colleague Cliff Zukin), we probed attitudes toward individual and government action on climate. The number crunching is not finished, but we seem to have found two puzzling (and perhaps related) results. As I reported a few weeks ago, more people see a need for government action on climate than those that believe is it man made. But here is what I had not thought through when I made that post. If the result shows up, it means that there is not really a need to convince people about the reality of anthropogenic climate change as a precondition for winning their support for government action on it.

More on Valuation

2009-02-23T05:34:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking more about how the attitude toward climate risk in the Developing World and the Developed World may drive disagreement going forward. I live in a pretty stable world. Day to day life is quite regular. Disruption is minimal. Not just that, where disruption occurs, life is stable under such perturbation unless it was extreme – which to date it has not been. (I have been in no serious car accidents, nor had serious disease and so on.) For me the calculus of cost and benefit for a 550 or 650 ppm world is negative. Climate change is driven by energy use which is tied to economic growth. I am well off enough that marginal growth does not yield much incremental benefit. Instead, I’d prefer to avoid the increase in potential disruption to my life that such climate change may risk. But now consider my counterpart – a poor person in a Developing Country. His day to day life is filled with disruptions to regularity – uncertainty in food supply, health, energy (if any) and so on. He lives on a knife edge - with little resilience to minor perturbations. You might think he should disfavor the increased risk that climate change would bring more than I would. But that is not obviously the case. For if climate change is driven by his increased energy use as a result of his increased economic growth he may be better off. For notice two things: the same marginal gain to me which is small relative to my income may be huge to him relative to his income. And that improvement may render him more resilient to the effects of climate change than he would have been – poorer in a lower ppm world. But not just that, his increased income will not just increase his resilience in the face of the effects of climate change but across all the other existing disruptive forces in his life.

Soft Support

2009-02-16T00:48:00.001-05:00

We just completed the second phase of a poll in New Jersey supported by PSEG on attitudes toward global warming policy. In an earlier poll we had been struck by the high degree of support for more government action. That is confirmed in these results. 66% believe the Federal government should play a major role in combating global warming. We find dramatic results when it comes to specific policy - 84% of respondents believe utility companies should be forced to use more renewable sources of energy and 80% of respondents support mandating higher energy conservation standard in new buildings and renovations – even though only 58% of respondents believe global warming is a fact and is mostly caused by human activity! That is the good news. The bad news is the drop in support when such policies are framed in terms of costs to the respondents themselves. Support for increasing energy from renewable sources drops to 49% when it is associated with 20% increase in utility prices. And support for higher building standards drops to 65% if it were to entail a 10% increase in the costs of construction. Most telling, only 17% would support the use of gas taxes to discourage driving. These results underscore how “soft” support for these policies is and how much work needs to be done to consolidate such support before such policies begin to bite.

Rights?

2009-02-09T18:40:00.003-05:00

Where does talk about rights get you? A climate talk I listened to last week began from a familiar starting point in arguing for the obligations of the Developed World to the rest: rights. Citing the Declaration of Human Rights, the claim was that humans have a right to life, liberty and justice, but also food security, housing, economic well being and … . The contrast here is between what philosophers call negative rights and positive rights. Negative rights arise out of what are sometimes called duties of non-interference. I have a duty not to interfere with your freedom of speech for example. Positive rights are duties I have to do things for you – like a duty to provide you with food. Philosophy is pretty good at generating an account of negative rights. One way to do that is to start with the idea that the benefits of cooperative living bring us into inevitable conflict with each other as we live cheek by jowl. It is in all of our interests to limit the kinds of interferences that can arise under these circumstances. The idea is to maximize our own freedom consistent with rendering the same to others. But none of that generates a duty for any of us to do things for each other. A duty not to drown you is different from a duty to save you if you are drowning. We may collectively arrive at such a positive duty. But it does not flow out of the negative duty. Note that rights here don’t come at the beginning of these arguments, they come at the end. They are the conclusions of arguments not premises. So what about a right to things like food security, housing, economic well being and so on? Of what arguments are these the conclusions? I am not saying there are no such arguments. Just that they need to be provided. You can’t get these rights by just stamping your foot. The beauty of negative rights is that you can get them out of nothing. That is because they arise out of a mutual interest in restraining our behavior. By parallel reasoning, positive rights might come out of our having a mutual interest in assuming obligations. I am not saying you can’t do that. But maybe that is not necessary in the area of climate. Anthropogenic climate change is an effect of our actions. Those effects are visited on some more than others and on many who are not agents of those actions. Why don’t these actions violate duties of non-interference? Leave aside the thorny question of whether we have such duties toward Nature. (Moral philosophy falls very much in the domain of human affairs and we have difficulty extending it except to other agents. It is easy to think of extending it to non-human agents. The problem is of thinking of Nature as an agent.) Why doesn’t the Developed World’s action violate duties of non-interference toward the Developing World? Suppose you and I share a well. I foul it, or take all the water. I have done something unfair. I owe you something. Did I violate some duty of non-interference? If so, toward what? Your right to the water? Then we are back to positive rights even if now it does not generate a duty for me to render something to you. But where does your right to water come from? If there is no water, can you stamp your foot and demand it? From whom? What seems more plausible to say IF there is water, you and I have a right to an equal share to it. (Again this leaves Nature and the problem of rights talk toward it out of the picture.) At least in understanding our obligations toward each other, a prima facie principle of equal share is all we need. The Developed World’s historic obligation does not need to be derived from positing all sorts of rights. The Declaration of Human Rights is in the end a political statement not a philosophical one. The philosophical grounding is simpler to finesse.

Attitudes in China

2009-02-02T17:41:00.001-05:00

Here is an interesting and somewhat hopeful (edited) report about climate attitudes in China - in a report by Li Jing of China Daily published lat last year. I am of two minds about this and previous such survey results ... they seem too good to be true, especially when compared to attitudes in more developed countries. Could it be, that the respondents are not as spoiled as those in Developing countries and have less in hand to loose or give up? Or could it be that the sample is urban and educated and not really representative of the whole population?

A recent survey released by the Climate Group, a British-based not-for- profit environmental organization, and Beijing Consumers Association, shows that up to 69 percent of Chinese consumers are willing to change their lifestyles in order to help with global efforts to combat climate change.
The survey, conducted by TNS, a market research company, and Lippincott, a consulting firm on branding strategy, interviewed about 1,000 consumers in 14 major Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai.
About 99 percent of consumers interviewed said they are aware of the threat the world is facing as a result of the global warming.
"With the rapid development of China's economy and improvement of people's living standards, Chinese consumers have become more concerned about their behaviors' impact on the environment," says Zhang Ming, general secretary of Beijing Consumers Association.
About 50 percent of the consumers interviewed said they are willing to spend more time in the efforts to fight the global warming, and 29 percent say they would like to pay more.
Among all the measurements, energy saving is one of the key solutions consumers could think of, the survey shows.
Consumers say they would like to do as much as they can to save energy through changing their commuting methods, for instance, avoiding using private cars and relying more on public transportation.
Changing habits in using household electricity and heating to save more energy are also feasible choices for them to address the global warming issue.

And Now it Starts

2009-01-26T17:43:00.001-05:00

Greenhouse gas reduction bills like California's AB 32 and New Jersey's legislation use the same legislative strategy. They extract no pain at the front end and buy some time to win voter acquiescence before they kick in and start to extract a real cost. That is when the risk of roll back will be greatest. But as the commentary below illustrates, the calls for roll backs are already starting:

By California Assemblyman Logue (R-Yuba City).

As a new Member of the California State Assembly I have introduce my first bill to suspend AB 32 the so-called California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. In 2006, on a party-line vote, Legislative Democrats passed AB 32 over the objections of the Republicans. Authored by then Assembly Speaker Fabien Núñez, ostensibly to combat the effects of global warming, AB 32 forces businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. Appealing to the politically correct crowd of 2006, AB 32 was hailed far and wide by left leaning political elites. They could not have envisioned our economic downturn or the devastating effects of AB 32 on California's economy and it's environment - or could they...

There have been economic slumps in past decades and subsequent recoveries. But there are major differences between then and now. The military build-up of the Regan administration and California's extensive military and defense industry infrastructure fueled the economic rebound of the 1980's. In the 1990's the housing boom spurred economic growth even in the face of the Gray Davis deficit and the legislature's out of control spending. The difference today is that California no longer enjoys a robust military and defense industry economy and California's housing industry is in a shambles.

It gets worse, compounded by California's hostile regulatory environment, businesses are now expected to try to compete in a global economy. Sacramento liberals may say, "Let them eat cake..." but the global economy, by definition, means global competition - for states too. California's implementation of AB 32 has crippled our ability to compete in the global economy. Our prosperity is not just impacted by neighboring states, but by other nations. Competitors like India and China cheer our environmental regulations. Meanwhile, China is experiencing an industrial revolution the world has never seen. They are creating wealth and prosperity while we move money around. China and India are also building 600 coal-fire power plants over the next few years, which, when in operation, will negate any gains achieved by AB 32 in a matter of days.

In response to this, the left claims "We will create green jobs like solar panels." Unfortunately, we are now importing solar panels from China and those panels are being produced by plants powered by coal-fired plants (carbon emissions) and shipped to America. Because of our high land costs, environmental fees, impact fees, and over regulation of business, we will end up buying the green technology and products from Nevada, Texas, Mexico and China. The growing chorus in business is A.B.C...Anywhere But California.

In the last year alone California lost 95,000 private sector jobs and our manufacturing base has been devastated. An Independent economist stated AB 32 is a threat to our remaining 1.5 million manufacturing jobs. AB 32 will hurt our environment. AB 32 is a job killer, businesses can't comply and remain competitive, so they are leaving. This has resulted in less tax revenues for environmental mitigation bringing a halt to many programs that keep our public safe from toxic waste and limit our ability to provide safe, clean, water. As of now, there are thousands of toxic sites in California and no money to mitigate. Given the current state of our economy, AB 32 must be suspended before it suspends our funding for schools, law enforcement, parks, water storage, and any hope of economic recovery. At its most basic analysis - no private sector jobs - no economy - no economy - no tax revenues for the state for anything.We will be broke.

But we will be politically correct and Hollywood will love us!

Originally published at: http://www.flashreport.org/commentary0b.php?postID=2009012411552336&authID=2005081622025042&post_offsetP=0

The Coast

2009-01-19T20:44:00.000-05:00

A new EPA report on the effects of climate change on the Mid-Atlantic region provides more rreaosns to begin to worry more about the well being of the coastal region. As the authors put it:
"At the current rate of sea-level rise, coastal residents and businesses have been
responding by rebuilding at the same location, relocating, holding back the sea by coastal engineering, or some combination of these approaches. With a substantial acceleration of sea-level rise, traditional coastal engineering may not be economically or environmentally sustainable in some areas."
For the complete report, go to: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/coastal/sap4-1.html.

More on Cleaning the Air

2009-01-12T13:12:00.000-05:00

The New Scientist carries an informative article on ambient CO2 capture in its January 7th edition which includes a good disucssion of 3 competing methodlogies that are in play. A (The?) key issue is the energy requirements to seperate out CO2 from the asorbent material that is used to capture it to allow the sorbent to be reused. For more, go to http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126901.200-can-technology-clear-the-air.html?full=true

Trouble?

2009-01-05T10:39:00.002-05:00

Reports this weekend suggest a split in the incoming Administration over the needs of the climate and the needs of the economy with Lawrence Summers sounding alarms about the effect of unilateral climate action by the United States on its international competitiveness. That is worrisome. In the long run, Economics 101 supports Summers’ position. But in the short run, climate policy catalyzes efficiency gains which can offset and even provide a net advantage that offsets carbon cap or tax costs. But more importantly, it is a mistake to view international climate regulation on a market model. Most of the rest of the World is waiting for the U.S. to establish is climate bona fides. With that in place, it will hard for them to avoid acting as well for two reasons: organized inaction is very unlikely politically. Haphazard inaction is unlikely to be uniform. But as some countries join climate control efforts the international pressure on those that don’t will rise.

Re the comment below: the contrast is not between economics and climate but rather short term economics and long term economics. In the short run, there are economic gains from winding out of a carbon economy. But in the long run, the added cost of clean energy will have adverse (economic) effects.

Voluntary Vaccination

2008-12-29T18:53:00.001-05:00

In some places in the United States you are not required to have your child immunized against childhood diseases. For whatever reason, some people decline to do so and place all unimmunized children at risk. But that includes some children (under 12 months old) that are too young to be immunized. So the risk pool includes more than those whose parents have chosen not to have them immunized as a matter of choice. Assume there is some risk of immunization. Assume if everyone else gets immunized, I don’t need to – since the chance of my child becoming infected false to near zero. Then altruism aside, why should I get my child immunized? The set up is ready made for me to act as free rider – but so it is for everyone else, which would place us all at risk. Here is a prime example in which making choice an individual matter produces an outcome to the disadvantage of all. A collective choice sidesteps that by limiting individual choice. But in a democracy, we are then put in a position of having to (individually) choose to limit our own freedom. Why would we do that? If I elect not to be a free rider, I need to worry that others will. A vote guarantees that if I elect not to be a free rider, nobody else can either. But as with vaccination so with energy.

The New Jersey 2050 Plan

2008-12-22T14:05:00.000-05:00

New Jersey has released the draft of its green house gas reduction plan for 2020 and 2050: http://www.state.nj.us/globalwarming/home/stakeholder.html .
“The 2050 limit – reduce emissions to a level 80 percent below 2006 emission levels … represents the emission level necessary to avoid the worse potential effects from climate change. … Citizens of New Jersey will have to govern, work and live much differently than we do now, with an emphasis on smarter and greater efficiency. The existing and conventional policies, practices, behaviors, and technologies that brought us to the current problems will obviously not lead to their solutions.”

The Empirical Mind

2008-12-15T14:19:00.001-05:00

At CSP we are committed to measuring the success of interventions to change people's behavior empirically – that is we want actual measure of things like energy behavior not people’s self reports. That is reasonably easy to do with a cooperating partner like a utility company. But what if you are interested in measuring changes in people’s attitudes? To my mind, the crisis of climate is much more a matter of winning citizen support for government policy than a matter of changing individual behavior. Individual behavior simply lacks the impact to make a difference – even in aggregate. It is not just that individual households are only part of the climate problem. It is more that changing our behavior is a function of the choices we have available to us and those are not under our control – even our collective control. Take public transportation. We may all be ready to take it but that is of no value if it is not there. And it won’t be there without a government decision to build it. But as government acts in the long run, its actions will inevitably chafe. Winning voter acquiescence for government action is therefore crucial. And so understanding how to do that is crucial as well. But how do you find an empirical measure of what works? Stay tuned.

Vacuum Cleaner for the Air?

2008-12-08T16:34:00.002-05:00

Some people litter. It would be better if they didn’t. We can exhort them to do otherwise. It only helps a bit. So we threaten fines. But actually imposing the fines is just too costly. It is cheaper to hire street sweepers. Cleaning the environment is more practical than trying to change each miscreant’s behavior. As with littering, so with greenhouse gasses, I want to argue. It is not that we should stop trying to limit them at the source. But in the final analysis it may be more practical to concentrate on cleaning up the air after the fact.

When we release carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere it eventually gets reabsorbed – some by trees and plants, but most by the oceans. In the pre-industrial world, atmospheric CO2 was stable at about 270 parts per million. It is now at 380 parts per million and there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that we need to limit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to at most 450 parts per million, if only on grounds of prudence. So we have 70 parts per million left to spend. At our current rate of output we will do so within 25 years. After that we will only be able to put out what Nature can absorb if we want CO2 to remain at a steady state in the atmosphere. So once we reach our limit, Nature’s rate of absorption will determine our carbon allowance going forward. The prevailing popular assumption has been that the carbon cycle is about 100 years. That is to say, the CO2 put into the atmosphere prior to 1908 has now been fully reabsorbed. But Nature may not be nearly that forgiving. We may be off by a factor of 100! If it takes 10,000 years for CO2 to be fully reabsorbed, once we spend our budget and reach 450 parts per million that will be it! To remain in a steady state, we will effectively need to be on a zero CO2 diet – unless we can remove anything we put out.

Even if we do just that for coal fired power plants, that won’t solve the problem. They constitute only 25% of our total carbon output. The rest comes from many other sources. Some are large, like manufacturing processes. But much comes from you and me as we conduct our daily lives. That is only going to get worse as developing economies grow. Urbanization, electrification, and transportation will drive such carbon output. And even if we had the resolve to do so, regulating the effects of these kinds of social transformations will be extraordinarily difficult to administer.

Instead, cleaning up this output from the air may in the end be a more practical solution. It is a solution that has three other virtues. First, a 100 year cycle would have the virtue of wiping the historical slate clean in a reasonable amount of time. But in a 10,000 year cycle, the carbon output of the now developed world is still with us, and is going to be with us, as is an historical responsibility to clean up our mess. Second, if 450 part per million turns out to be too liberal a level for our collective well being, we would have a way to remove more CO2 to reach a more desirable level. Third, there is no guarantee that a world-wide consensus on what counts as a prudent level of CO2 will emerge. The tradeoff between economic growth and global warming may look very different depending on how well off you are in the here and now. An option to clean the air would allow those who care the most, and can afford to pay for it, to act on their own behalf even as everyone else might benefit.

But is there any prospect of us actually cleaning the air? The fact of the matter is that if carbon capture and sequestration can be developed for coal power plants, a variant of the same technology ought to be possible for ambient CO2. Research in this area is already underway – with the prospect of ambient CO2 capture units being placed in locations that have sustained winds that can be used to both move air through the units and power them. As always, God is in the details. But as we hopefully move forward with a well thought out program for climate research with a new administration, working out those details deserves to be given a high property.

Where are we?

2008-12-01T08:51:00.000-05:00

In the outgoing congress, there were 45 reliable votes for serious climate change legislation in the Senate. The bad news is that despite the changed makeup of the Senate, the count is about the same – 6 votes short of a majority and 14-16 vote short of a veto proof majority (depending on how races in Minnesota and Georgia come out). That makes it all the more crucial to focus on the question of the White House. Not since the Johnson administration, has a president come in with the political capital to set an agenda and demand congressional assent. Climate change legislation may only occur to the extent that Obama is willing to spend that political capital to make it a priority. And we know such capital has a short shelf life. But the route to this legislation is unlikely to be direct. Before the economic crisis, one might have hoped for climate legislation to have been greased for passage with the promise of green job investments along with hand waving about energy independence. The collapse of oil prices removes the immediate political value of the second of these. But the economic crisis makes the green job investments central. So central, that we should no longer expect a climate bill with them a secondary but an employment bill with the climate provisions as secondary. That is not going to be easy to pull off. Climate provisions, like a 20% reduction by 2020 and 80% by 2050 are not in and of themselves politically attractive. So if they are add-ons to a (green) jobs bill there will be all sorts of incentives to lop them off. Still, it may be the only politically viable option at this point.

Changing Behavior

2008-11-24T02:32:00.000-05:00

Just spent an interesting couple of days at a second annual conference on behavior and climate change - http://www.beccconference.org . Some thoughts about programs to change behavior:
1. What are the goals?: Is the goal to reduce peak demand? To reduce average energy use? To reduce green-house gasses? Or is it to win support for ongoing government policy on climate? All of these are worthy goals but the way to achieve them may not be the same. For example, reducing peak demand by shifting demand does not reduce average demand.
2. Who is the target?: For at least some of these goals, the largest energy users ought to be the target on grounds of efficiency. But if, for example, subsidies and incentives are involved, considerations of equity may come into play as well. Decisions need to be made on how to balance these competing goals. Either way, one thing we lack is good segmentation studies of these targets. Segmenting an audience into distinct groups that may have differing interests and motivation is crucial to both understanding whom to reach and how best to reach them. The best segmentation research on climate and energy has been done in the U.K.. However, new and creative ways of approaching segmentation outside the climate and energy field merit examination. Three different approaches to both segmentation and its application re worth keeping in mind going forward: the most traditional assumes we are looking for people of like mind qua climate (for example, committed environmentalists, deniers etc) and then seeks messages that “work” for each group. A second approach assumes an underlying psychology is more determinative than specific attitudes or beliefs and looks to divide people up on the basis of that underlying theory and its associated taxonomy. Finally, recently developed more experimental approaches attempt to construct a typology de novo out of raw data with a minimum of assumptions at the front end. Using this methodology, we first ask what works in a population and then seek to find out what characteristics the population that responds has.
3. What method?: Knowing the goals and the targets still leaves open the method of how to reach them. Intuition favors education on the assumption the knowledge drives belief which drives behavior. Evidence points to the limits of such models in favor of marketing approaches. Marketing approaches should be distinguished between those that promote messages using the subject of interest – for example, “save energy” and those that are willing to embrace indirection – for example, “Brad Pitt drives a Prius.” But it would be a mistake to limit the menu of choices to these two alternatives. Along with the provision of information, it is worth considering: i. incentives – including subsidies; ii. symbolic rewards – prizes, awards; iii. side-bets – like a commitment to pay money to your least favorite charity if you fail to reach an agreed upon savings goal; iv. opt outs; v. technology options and of course vi. pricing options. The question of how much information is needed to be effective is an open question.
4. An important unknown: Unfortunately, for any method that does work, a crucial missing datum is persistence. Will the change in behavior remain over time? Will the behavior decay? Even if it does not, how will it affect the projected energy growth path? Absent reliable data on persistence it will be hard to plan growth energy capacity with any confidence.
5. On-going evaluation: Nothing could be worse than to set out on a long-term course of action without the capacity to evaluate its effectiveness in near real time. Programs should be designed with this in mind so that they can be adjusted on the fly. For example, the more programs are narrow cast* to targets audiences the easier it is to design effective evaluations. (*The use of mail and the internet as opposed to broadcast and print media.)
6. We are not alone: Every state in the Union and many countries are addressing the same set of problems we face. It would be foolhardy not to learn from them and share our experiences with them. Putting in place a mechanism to do this ought to be a sine qua non. (A few utilities themselves have pioneered important research paradigms that deserve scrutiny.)
7. Cost-benefit analysis: We owe it to the citizenry to keep track of the costs of each renewable KwH or ton of CO2 saved and to take into account all of the costs. Direct subsidies for solar are the only subsidies to the end users. But from a social point of view, all of the advertising to recruit users should be taken into account as well. Only by understanding the full costs can we be in a position to consider alternatives.
8. Attend to core lessons for other fields: The goals we are concerned with may be unique but the tools we have at our disposal are not. There are lessons to be learned from the two most successful social policy programs of the last century: smoking cessation and seat belt use. Moreover, numerous fields are generating insights that merit examination, including: i. diffusion modeling – the study of how and who spreads ideas; ii. design theory – the study of how design influences behavior; iii. the use of cultural media – especially social dramas that ‘model’ the desired behavior change; iv. the study of barriers to adoption – including limited capital, inseparable features, and transaction costs; and v. behavioral economics – the study of deviations from rational choice models.
9. A key insight from the social sciences: Successful change is less an individual matter than a matter of collective change. We like to think of ourselves as more autonomous than we are. This has far reaching ramifications for designing a program for change. We de-emphasize the role of habit and imitation in the way we behave. We undervalue how much we follow and model others. We are embarrassed to admit how much we value social approval. And we forget how much “team spirit” can act as a motivator.
10. Externalities: In the final analysis, it is of the problem of externalities (costs we do not pay for) that drives the core set of problems we are concerned with when it comes to green house gasses. The more we can internalize those prices the easier the road ahead.

More is less

2008-11-17T02:14:00.001-05:00

As summarized in the Research section of our web page (www.csp.rutgers.edu), a recent poll we did with support from the utility PSEG uncovered two disturbing results:
1. People who believe in anthropogenic climate change are more likely to have false beliefs about the causes of climate change than others.
2. They are also no more likely to engage in energy saving behavior than anyone else either!
How to explain these disturbing results? I think they both point to the danger of thinking, not unreasonably that knowledge shapes belief which guides action. Here we have something very different going on. Once you believe in human caused climate change, that belief shapes what you accept as knowledge not the other way around. And your actions turn out not to be governed by those beliefs irrespective of where they come from. All of this points to the need to think more creatively about the determinants of behavior and behavioral change.

More Gore

2008-11-10T01:27:00.002-05:00

In “The Climate for Change,” NY Times editorial, Nov. 9th, Al Gore calls for the U.S. to pursue carbon cap and trade policies. What he does not call for is U.S. unilateral action to legislate mandated C02 reductions to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% below by 2050. It is a crucial omission. I came away from conversations with Indian and Chinese government advisors on climate this summer with the clear sense that any and all international negotiations will bog down until and unless the U.S. establishes its bona fides. We need to engage in what a Chinese adviser called “a game changer”. Gore’s other prescriptions are all sensible – increasing alternative energy, building smart national grids, accelerating hybrid auto development and deployment – but they will take many years to implement. His ten year timetable ignores the fact that, assuming normal continued economic growth, U.S. energy demand is going to double within the next 30 years. We need action now that publically binds us to a course of development over time, come what may. The new administration is considering just such action - 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% below by 2050 – but the danger is that this objective will get trumped by the political pressure to the chimera of an energy independence policy.

Next year in Congress?

2008-11-03T09:45:00.000-05:00

Nancy Pelosi’s chief of staff told us here at Eagleton that he thinks a climate bill will come to the floor of the Congress in the Fall of 09. Here is some information on what is under discussion taken from the Alliance to Save Energy - http://ase.org/files/5161_file_dingell_boucher.pdf

From Bad to Worse

2008-10-27T13:03:00.003-04:00

WWF recently produced a summary of recent research. The main claim: “Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions released as a consequence of human activity have been accelerating, with their growth rate increasing from 1.1% per year between 1990 and 1999, to more than 3% per year between 2000 and 2004. The actual emissions growth rate since 2000 was greater than any of the scenarios used by the IPCC in either the Third or Fourth Assessment Reports. Over the past 15 years, about half the CO2 emissions arising from human activity have been absorbed by land and ocean. However, the capability of these natural ‘sinks’ is declining at a greater rate than forecast in earlier studies. This means that more of the CO2 emitted from human activities will stay in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.” The full report is available at: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/wwf_science_paper_october_2008.pdf

Now what?

2008-10-20T10:03:00.001-04:00

With the economic down-turn, there are rumblings from both Europe and the United States that climate change policy has to be put off. Reinvigorating economic growth is the priority. Some are arguing that policies like cap and trade are growth promoting and hence there is no conflict. This strikes me as naive. The Polish economy's dependence on its domestic coal supply is not going to benefit from such a program even if others do. And even if others do, those economic benefits are not going to operate in the short term. I think the more telling policy is that all climate policies are long term policies. They are irrelevant to short term economic interests and neutral in their short terms effects. The worst thing one can do is to mix up the two. Relying on climate policies to promote short term economic growth simply leads to the temptation distort what needs to be done over many years into an excuse to spend a lot of money now. The result may benefit the economy but will disappoint when it comes to controlling greenhouse gas output.

Valuation

2008-10-13T14:22:00.000-04:00

Suppose I tell you that buying a car with side-impact bags improves you survivability in a crash by x%. Crashes are low probability, high cost outcomes. The cost is high enough so that when you multiply it by the probability, it likely still outweighs the price of the side-impact bags. So it would seem to make sense for everyone to buy them. Not so fast! If I am really poor, suppose that money may be what I need to a health insurance policy. And, fair or not, having a health insurance policy will be important not just in a crash (unless it is fatal) but other times I get sick as well. When you take into account scarce resources, the calculus begins to look less obvious. As with cars, so with climate. Here is an argument I heard recently in India from a prominent government climate negotiator: if there is a trade off between economic growth and limiting climate change, being better off, if you are really poor, may put you in better shape to deal with climate change – even if the change is worse than it would have been without that growth. There has to be a limit on this argument – it could not be right for extreme climate change where survival in imperiled. But short of that, is there a range on climate change in which it does apply – say a 550ppm world as opposed to a 450ppm world? You might complain that this is a false polarity – if the Developed World cuts back on carbon output there would be lots of room for the Developed World to grow economically within safe limits. But as I discussed in an earlier post (on July 7th below), that is far from obvious.

Lackner's Trees

2008-10-06T00:00:00.000-04:00

Klaus Lackner and his associates have been working on a model to capture climate from the air rather than the smokestacks of coal fired power plants. That has many many advantages if it works and is cost effective:
1. Lots of CO2 comes from places other than coal fired power plants.
2. Capturing CO2 from them is going to be next to impossible.
3. To put it politely, not everyone running a coal fired power plant is necessarily going to actually capture the CO2 given the additional costs of doing so, even if they say they are going to.
4. Separating out who and where CO2 is produced and where and when it is captured allows the Developed World to clean up some of its historic output.
I spoke to Lackner recently, and he is cited figures of $200 a ton going down to $30 a ton for the operating such a system at scale. This includes the cost of manufacture and the power needs of the system but excludes the costs of sequestration. He envisages deploying small units (the size of shipping containers) that each remove 1 ton of CO2 a day. Like all carbon capture, this approach uses power, so unless you use renewable energy as a source, it adds to the problem as it works to solve it. Cleaning up the CO2 that a coal fired power plant produces requires you to burn 30% more coal to produce the energy for the clean up. On the other hand, with an ambient system you could locate Lackner’s units in a desert and run them with solar power. How many would you need? If each extracts 1 ton of CO2 a day, 3 will take out roughly 1,000 tons a year. The world currently puts out about 27 gigatons (billion tons) of CO2 annually and we need to reduce to 18 gigatons to stabilize atmospheric CO2 at 450 parts per million. Lackner is about to publish data on his work which has been eagerly awaited by the scientific community. If it holds up, the real fly in the ointment of the whole scheme may be the sequestration of the carbon. But one way or another, there is no getting around the urgent need to test sequestration for safety on land or in deep sea locations. There is too much coal available to burn.

Knowledge, Belief ..... Action?

2008-09-29T19:04:00.000-04:00

We recently conducted a survey of 1,003 New Jersey adults with funds provided by PSEG on beliefs and knowledge of the causes of climate change and what relation (if any) these might have to energy consumption habits. Here are some highlights.

Belief in human caused climate change:

A majority of respondents (54%) believe global warming is a proven fact and mostly caused by human activity. 18% believe it is a proven fact but not caused by human activity. 21% believe it is not as yet a proven fact.

80% of respondents reported lowering the use of their heating and cooling systems in the last 2 years. Roughly 75% said they had installed compact fluorescent light bulbs. Roughly two-thirds each said they had bought energy-efficient appliances in the last two years and had programmable thermostats in their homes A third or a bit more each had installed more efficient heating or cooling systems, replaced windows, or added or replaced insulation. “Clean energy" options of buying "green electricity" or installing solar panels were taken by less than 10%.
However, the results demonstrated few statistically significant relationships between belief in human caused climate change and reporting having engaged in energy saving actions. Believers were more likely to say they bought energy-efficient appliances, reduced the duration of use of heating and air conditioning, and installed compact fluorescent light bulbs than others, but did not differ on seven other actions. Respondents considered “saving money” to be the most persuasive argument for saving energy when asked to rate a list of hypothetical arguments.

Other noteworthy findings:

Although respondents who believe in human caused climate change have more accurate knowledge than others about the true causes of global warming (i.e., cars, the use of coal and oil by utilities, home heating and cooling and tropical forest destruction), they also have more false beliefs – for example, rating both ozone depletion and nuclear power as major causes as well. Among all respondents, 69% list ozone depletion as a major cause and 37% list nuclear power generation.

Support of the need for both the Federal and NJ State government to take action to stem global warming finds strong support among those who believe global warming is human caused (86%), and more generally by a majority OF all respondents. A belief that climate change will have a serious impact on NJ found similar rates of support.

Discussion and implications of the findings:

Although this study reports high rates of energy saving actions by respondents, self-reports are prone to be inaccurate. Such findings need to be corroborated with measurements of actual usage data. That said, these results may throw into question how much “low hanging” fruit there is for energy saving programs to target.

Although support for government action is high, these results are apt to fall dramatically when the actions specified could have a direct impact on the respondent as opposed to (for example) business and industry. As NJ moves to implement regulations to reduce green house gases, it would be valuable to understand the contours of support for government action better.

The fact that belief in human caused climate change is correlated with accurate knowledge of its true causes, but not with accurate knowledge of false causes, underscores the fact that the relationship between belief and knowledge is not nearly as straightforward as one might wish. Believing in human caused climate change may make one more prone to thinking that the causes of it are more widespread than they actually are.

The fact belief in human caused climate change is not correlated with many energy saving actions should give pause to any planning for education programs. The goals of such education programs need to be examined. If promoting energy efficiency is a goal, other than price, alternatives to improved education about climate change causes and effective solutions also merit examination – including norm based approaches, marketing strategies and the provision of real time consumption information.

Geoengineering and Experimental Design

2008-09-22T16:08:00.001-04:00

Writing in the New York Times (September 19, 2008) Thomas Homer-Dixon and David Keith argue for the importance of settling some of the uncertainty about geoengineering climate solutions by experimentation. They write: “Of course, flooding the atmosphere with man-made particles poses real risks. So to reduce the uncertainty surrounding geo-engineering, research should include real-world tests of various technologies that poke the climate system just a little. At first, tests might use existing research aircraft like NASA’s ER-2, a heavy version of the U-2, to release small payloads of particles and then measure the effects on solar radiation and the ozone layer. If these early tests showed the risks were low, enough material could then be released to have a detectable climate impact, while still keeping the amount substantially less than that needed to offset all human-driven global warming. For the second stage of tests, we might use high-altitude aircraft to deliver a larger quantity of particles at about 65,000 feet in the tropics, which would then be carried much higher and toward the poles by the natural overturning circulation in the stratosphere. The reduction in climate risk from even a small-scale sun-shading scheme could easily be larger than the increase in risk from the scheme’s possible side effects. And in any case the effort would cost only a tiny fraction of the expense of meaningful efforts to reduce man’s carbon emissions.”

So far so good. But before we start down this track it is worth asking just what information we might expect to get to settle the question of whether or not to intervene at a level of intensity and scale that could actually make a difference. The problem is two-fold. In the natural progression of scientific inquiry, mathematical modeling might be expected to be followed by limited experimentation which (if the results merit it) can then be implemented at scale. In the case of aerosols, ‘limited experimentation’ comes in two forms:
1. Geographically limited interventions.
2. Low concentration insertions.
But in both cases, we ought to ask if they are feasible and if so, what sort of information they might be capable of yielding. The first raises issues of safety - could such experimental interventions be contained? The second raises issues of scale – could the results of low concentration interventions be reliably projected for higher level concentrations? These are not killer objections, but they merit attention – if only because they may matter less for some kinds of interventions as compared to others.

China

2008-09-15T14:10:00.001-04:00

ChinaDialogue reports: The government should accept binding targets on greenhouse-gas emissions, Hu Angang, a leading Chinese academic, has written. The suggestion represents a break with the Chinese negotiating position on climate change. Hu, a Tsinghua University economist and chinadialogue contributor, told Reuters: "China is a developing country, but it's a very special　one, with the biggest population, high energy use and sooner or later, if not now, the biggest total greenhouse-gas emissions. So this is a common battlefront we must join." According to Hu's proposal, which was published in the Chinese-language Journal of Contemporary Asia-Pacific Studies, China's greenhouse-gas pollution could continue to rise until around 2020, before the country would "dramatically" curb emissions, cutting them
to half the 1990 level by 2030, and then half that by 2050. China should make such a commitment even if the United States refuses to join a global pact on climate change, Hu said. The article is likely to spark debate about China's position during the negotiations toward the new agreement on climate change after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

Good new from Russia

2008-09-08T14:33:00.000-04:00

RIA Novosti reports:

Most Russians believe global warming is a reality, according to a poll conducted on June 14-15 by the Public Opinion foundation.

The poll said two thirds of respondents believe the climate has become warmer in recent years, while 86% of those polled "had heard about global warming occurring on the Earth." At the same time, 15% did not believe global warming was happening and 18% experienced difficulty in assessing whether the climate had changed at all.
Slightly more than half (51%) said that average temperatures in their region had risen, while 20% said that the local weather had remained unchanged, and 13% said the average temperatures had dropped over the past few years. Half of those who believe global warming is real think it has a negative impact on human life, with 5% believing it has a positive influence and 3% saying it had no effect. Half of those that believe global warming is real (or 33% of the total number) said it was completely down to human activity, while over 30% of the group (25% of the total number) said it was a result of a mixture of man-made and natural factors. And 8% said climate change was a natural phenomenon. The opinion pollster said 5% believe that global warming is natural, 3% blame the destruction of the ozone layer, 2% put it down to natural anomalies and 2% to solar influence. Less that 1% said climate change is God's punishment and evidence of the end of the world approaching. Over a third (36%) of respondents believe that global warming cannot be stopped. The poll was conducted in 100 towns and villages in 46 Russian regions, territories and republics with 1,500 respondents taking part. A first deputy emergencies minister said last week that by 2030 global warming and the melting of northern Russia permafrost could lead to a catastrophe destroying housing, infrastructure and forests. Speaking during a roundtable in the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, Ruslan Tsalikov said over a quarter of housing in north Russia could be destroyed along with local airports, underground storage facilities, including oil reservoirs, if Siberia's huge permafrost started to melt further. It would also threaten to release huge quantities of methane gas - Russia's permafrost is believed to hold 30% of the world's entire supplies.

Consumers in developing countries lead in climate awareness

2008-09-01T07:51:00.002-04:00

Here is a report that merits attention:
Consumers in developing countries lead in climate awareness

In order to understand how the perception of global warming and climate change is affecting consumer behaviour, Havas Media has undertaken research to explore how, across a number of markets, this consumer perception of climate change is – and has the potential to – impact on business. Working in nine markets – US, UK, France, Spain, Brazil, Germany, China, India and Mexico – the research explores consumer perception at three levels – the phenomenon itself, with respect to key sectors and finally with respect to leading brands within those sectors.

One clear observation is that in countries with lower average income, awareness for climate change and its effects, as well as the willingness to act upon it, are far more greater then, for instance, in the USA and the UK. The number of so called eco-apathetics amounts to six times the numbers in Mexico or Brasil.

Some of the key messages, according to Havas:

1. Consumers are extremely engaged with the climate change issue – nearly 80% at a global level are what we call either Attentive or Absorbed. That’s a lot of people ready to listen and act.

2. And act they will. Our research shows that the two most likely actions undertaken
by consumers to combat the issue in the near future, are stopping buying environmentally damaging goods and buying more environmentally friendly goods.

3. Consumers are under no illusion that we can continue with ‘business as usual’. Within our Absorbed and Attentive groups, more than 3/4 recognise climate change will affect them and their families and that they will need to change the way they live in order to address the problem. More than 3/4 also believe they can actively contribute to solving the problem at a personal level. That’s a lot of people ready to do their bit.

4. This represents an incredible opportunity for brands to help consumers fulfil this aspirational role. And consumers are highly expectant. In 2/3 of the markets we researched, consumers felt large corporations had a responsibility to lead the charge in combating climate change.

5. When it comes to motivation to be a green consumer, we’ve identified Passive and Active Self-Seekers and Altruists. Understanding where their consumers sit within these groups, offers brands a vital insight into how best to open a dialogue with them on this issue.

6. It’s not just brands in traditionally damaging sectors that should be considering green communications. Through understanding the Ecolasticity™ of brand, we can see that potentially all brands can use green communications to their benefit. In fact, the hyper-Ecolastic™ brands may be where we least expect them to be.

7. When it comes to actually buying green, 80% of our respondents said they would buy more if more were on offer. 79% said they would rather buy from companies doing their best to reduce their impact on the environment. 89% people are likely to buy more green goods in the next 12 months and 35% are willing to pay a premium for those goods. Again, that is a significant group of people who are willing to accept a green premium.

8. In the last of our segmentation analyses, we have identified three types of consumer when it comes to buying green and paying a premium - Logicals, Accepting and Absolutes. Although driven by different motivations, more than 40% of Logicals and Absolutes are prepared to pay a premium for green goods. And Logicals and Absolutes make up more than 2/3 of our research.

9. Increasingly consumers are recognising the good guys and bad guys within
sectors. Which is great news for those brands that are pursuing and communicating
legitimate abatement strategies, as the sky becomes the limit. But it’s bad news for the slow or non-starters in the sector, as their ability to borrow credibility from their more proactive peers looks set to slip away.

10. All of the points above point unequivocally to the fact that a legitimate and well-executed green communication strategy represents a significant opportunity for arguably any brand looking to develop stronger and more meaningful relationships with its consumers.
More info at: http://www.havasmedia.com

Contra Al Gore

2008-08-25T03:51:00.000-04:00

Sometimes if you look to far ahead you miss what is front of your nose!
Al Gore’s call for the Unites States to convert to a 100% renewable energy portfolio within 10 years would be a great goal if it were realizable. One big problem stands in the way of such a plan. Large scale energy production is produced to match demand. But to rely on wind or solar power we would need to have massive storage capacity for energy to be available for use when there is no wind or sun. This is not a trivial problem. It is not an insoluble problem. But it is going to take scientific innovation and experimentation to solve – neither of which can be guaranteed to produce a desired result on a fixed timetable anymore than the cure for cancer or AIDS. None of this would matter were it not the fact that we pay an enormous price by focusing on Gore’s plan. For in doing so, we risk becoming sidetracked from the immediate priority – putting the developed world (and especially the United States) on a serious diet to wean it from its high per capita energy consumption and associated green-house gas emissions. That is what both Obama and McCain have indicated support for in their campaigns. Pushing U.S. consumption down by 20% of 2006 green-house gas levels by 2020 is a doable goal. Going on from there to an 80% (or even a 90%) reduction of 2006 green-house gas levels is going to be a challenge that is plausible, because it is not unreasonable to think that both massive storage capacity and carbon capture and sequestration will be mastered over the next 40 years – although here too there is no guarantee. But none of this is going to happen without a focus on the need for far reaching, binding legislation in the United States in the coming year. China and the rest of the world have a right to demand this before addressing their own long term energy planning.

Closer to home

2008-08-18T08:36:00.006-04:00

A recently published report (http://www.cier.umd.edu/climateadaptation/NewJersey%20Economic%20Impacts%20of%20Climate%20Change.pdf ), produced by the University of Maryland’s Center for Integrative Environmental Research, states that "New Jersey’s coastal infrastructure and development are thought to be the most susceptible to the impacts of climate change. By the end of the century, 1 percent to 3 percent of New Jersey’s 210-mile shoreline is likely to be lost to rising sea levels, and 6.5 percent to 9 percent of the state’s coastal area will be inundated by occasional flooding. ... Due to the extensive development on vulnerable barrier islands such as Long Beach Island and Atlantic City, damage costs associated with a 4-foot rise in sea level (the upper end of potential sea level rise predictions) are expected to exceed $10 billion."

80% by 2050

2008-08-11T05:35:00.002-04:00

How did an 80% reduction by 2050 of 21006 levels become the holy grail for climate legislation in the US? I suspect there must have been a time when people thought it was the level needed for stabalization at 450 ppm. But US per capita CO2 output in 2006 was (roughly) 20 tons per capita. So an 80% reduction puts you at 4 tons per capita. But if you assume an equal share per capita world wide - which is the only fair formula - and base it on current population levels, you would end up at 550 ppm not 450 ppm. To get to 450 ppm you would need about 2 tons per capita which translates into a 90% reduction for the US. In the long run this is a difference that matters. But does it in the short run? I suspect that 90% seems like a lot more of a reduction than 80%. Being left with 10% is afterall half of what you are left with on an 80% reduction. In fact, if the US gets serious about a path to an 80% reduction, squeezing out another 10% is unlikely to be that hard. And if 80% goes down easier than 90% now, so be it. But we should not kid ourseleves about what is actually needed. India and China will never sign onto a lower per capita target than the US. At 4 tons per capita that means a 550 ppm world.

India – more

2008-08-04T12:27:00.000-04:00

Like China, India has an incredibly ambitious planned growth trajectory – something like 8% a year. In the case of China you need to add to that the expected urban move of 500 million people and the growth of cars from 50 to 250 million over the next 20 years to understand the challenge of developing a low carbon pathway. In the case of India you need to add two salient facts about its poor – only 40% of the country is electrified and the fuel of necessity is biomass. One development goal is to move to 100% electrification. One effect of increasing development will be a move away form very inefficient biomass (8-10%) that is used for cooking to the use of kerosene. Add the growth of transportation, and here too the challenge seems enormous – even if unlike China, India starts from a much lower level of CO2 output – 1.3 gigatons versus 6.0.

India’s Plans

2008-07-28T23:02:00.000-04:00

Like China, India is planning for an energy efficient growth trajectory even if it is less detailed in its plan at least at this stage. The 2030 target puts total CO2 emissions at 3.9 gigatons down from a business as usual expected level of 5.5. What is more significant (at least in the short run) is that there is a high expectation that the US will enact some sort of serious legislation in the next year or two which should break the log jam on others making serious commitments. In India’s case, the unilateral commitment on the table is not to exceed the developed world. Of course, that is an easy promise to make given the current levels of developed world carbon output – there is no way India could come close to those levels on any plausible development path. The real issue is, if the developed world gets serious about reducing levels, will that downward trend create any sort of squeeze on India’s plans. Between now and 2030 the answer is certainly no. But what does this do to worldwide totals given the 450ppm stabilization goal?

China and Climate Change

2008-07-21T00:07:00.002-04:00

Finishing up and intense round of meetings in 10 days - here is a mixture of comments in no particular order:
1.The biggest shock to me has been how incredibly open and direct people I have met have been – even those close to and advising the government. With the exception of a group of young journalists, I have not had to worry about causing offense by challenging their views or assumptions. And pretty much anything has been game for discussion.
2.The other big shock has been how small the number of people working on climate and advising the government is given the size of the country. Talk to about 25 people and you have the terrain pretty much covered. It is like dealing with he elite of a very small country. I am only beginning to get a feel for then range of views. A few think the whole international discussion is an expression of anti-Chinese politics by the West. But more important, many of those who do think (seriously) about climate change, seem to view it solely through the lens of national interest. I have been surprised by the small number of cosmopolitan intellectuals who take a global perspective – or both a global and national perspective. Cynicism about nationalism is hard to find!
3.What everyone agrees on is that development is a non-negotiable priority … as a moral duty and perhaps (sotto voce) a political one as well for those in power. Yet (nearly) everyone (who has thought about climate change) seems confident that development goals can be realized along with no more than a fair share of carbon output. That is going from the current per capita output to no more than China’s share of a world maximum needed to stabilize at 450 part per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I ran into very few knowledgeable skeptics - even as 500 million are going to move from the rural areas to the cities and 200 million cars will be added to the roads between now and 2030 along with a doubling of coal consumption. Lots of technical discussions about the assumptions underlying this optimism – but the upshot is that they are not assuming an major new scientific breakthroughs up to 2030 (aside from CO2 capture and sequestration at scale) and nothing really dramatic until after 2050.
4.Another surprise has been how little skepticism they show that the US will get serious post the next election – although from their point of view, a serious plan has to have a 2050 goal of a fair per capita carbon allowance that applies to the US as well as everyone else. I have been surprised by their attitude that takes it for granted that we and they are going to get serious about this – although they are also worried abut the Catholic Church and India blowing world population beyond 9.5 billion as a stabilizing goal for 2050.
5.Those close to the government, are trying to convince the leadership that China’s climate plan should be serious because it is consistent with domestic environmental needs and economic growth at 7-8% a year.

China's Growth

2008-07-14T18:02:00.003-04:00

Let us assume everyone gets serious about a fair share of carbon for an eventual (stable) population of 10 billion (in 2050) on a per capita basis. 450ppm is roughly stable at 3 gigatons of carbon per annum – so it is 3 tons per capita. Per capita carbon for China is roughly 1.3 tons. The mantra in China is the development of a “low carbon economy”. That comes down to increasing energy efficiency and deploying existing technology. At issue is how much if a change in China’s carbon footprint that buys you given the rate of growth in the economy. Modelers here are talking about stabilization of carbon output in 2030. But even if that is right, I am not (as yet) clear at what level – especially given a projected growth rate of the economy at 8% per annum. The picture is daunting – even assuming the population stabilizes at 1.5 billion, 500 million people are projected to move from rural areas to cities where per capita energy consumption is triple the rural rate. And that does not take in to account the energy consumption for the concrete needed to build the houses and infrastructure which is a major source of CO2 output in China. Car ownership is projected to rise five fold to 250 million.