A green portfolio to fight global warming

November 10, 4:36 PMSF Environmental Policy ExaminerThomas Fuller

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I want to start today by thanking Malcolm Drake for his exellent guest post and spirited participation in the comments over the weekend. Thanks, Malcolm. Second, I want to say that I'm still on deadline and that further analysis of last week's survey will have to wait a bit more.

That said, I want to talk about medium sized things. It seems as though there are some who want to commit to drastic, large scale changes to fight global warming--huge in scale, cost and effects. Geoengineering! World Wide Cap and Trade! Get your tickets here... These programs would almost of necessity be government run and financed by tax dollars.

There are some who talk about personal, almost symbolic actions, like unplugging your mobile phone charger or using different light bulbs. Like wearing a ribbon on your lapel to show your support of one cause or another, it is a consciousness raising exercise, meant to keep a subject at the forefront of everybody's mind.

There are a number of medium-sized things we could do that would make a material contribution to improving our energy efficiency and lowering CO2. They wouldn't require command and control powers, but they would actually have meaning, not just symbolic potency.

We could easily require all new buildings to meet a certain standard of energy efficiency. Same for the appliances that go in them.

We could find ways to incentivise the collection of methane from sources where it escapes, ranging from landfills to pipelines to flares at oil wells. As methane has a commercial value, this would not need too much work.

We could use some Federal lands for construction of nuclear power plants, and streamline the permitting process. We built 125 nuclear power plants in 30 years--if the permitting was easier, we could do it again.

Governments use large fleets of vehicles for a variety of tasks. They are a big, big buyer of cars and trucks. Well, and tanks, too. Purchasing guidelines can move towards a green fleet--it's happening here in San Francisco, and elsewhere, too.

Did you know that Hawaii is powered more or less by diesel fuel? That's what runs their power plants. That could change.

Subsidizing residential installation of solar power is good--but how about commercial buildings? Skyscrapers probably wouldn't benefit, but think of all those long, low strip malls and warehouses.

Removing some of the restrictions to hydro-electric power--only 3% of our dams are used to generate power. That's throwing money away and CO2 into the air.

I could go on, and probably should. But the point is that there are a variety of sources of man-made CO2. It surely makes sense that we use a variety of sources to reduce that. Instead of omnibus legislation with all the high drama it entails, why don't we start doing what's in front of us?

If we started now doing the obvious, no-brainer stuff, in 20 years we could have really made a dent--and a difference.