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Policy that can work to address global warming
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Watching Roger Pielke Jr. speak on a sane climate/energy policy the other night, I was really wishing I could have surrendered my seat to my Congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi. On issues causing heated debate, it's extremely refreshing to find someone who knows the numbers, has thought about the numbers and offers intelligent options to consider.
His headline points--that we have underestimated the challenges we face in addressing global warming, that the current debate between 'skeptics' (or denialists, as their opposition labels them) and proponents of anthropogenic global warming (or alarmists, as their opposition labels them), is not only counter-productive but an active impediment to finding effective solutions, and that technology needs to evolve to the point where politicians can consider practical solutions instead of top-down targets, are close to my own beliefs. He is a bit more mainstream than I in his core assumptions about global warming, which I'll talk more about a bit later.
It may take several articles to present the parts of his 'lecture' that fired me up, so if you're too impatient to live with my holiday weekend writing schedule, you can download the slide pack from his lecture here. (You should do so in any case, if you've got a long-term interest in the issue.) For a bit more background you can read the interview I did with him last week here and here.) For basic orientation, Pielke Jr. (his father is a distinguished climate scientist who publishes regularly in scholarly journals, and I also had the opportunity to interview him--see here and here) is a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an Associate Fellow at Oxford's Institute for Science, Innovation and Society.
Background
Pielke noted that humans are emitting about 12 9 billion tons of CO2 annually, that the planet naturally removes about 4 billion of those tons, and that the remainder has pushed up concentrations to 380 parts per million in our atmosphere, and this has been rising by about 1% per year. (Many scientists think we need to stabilize concentrations at 450 parts per million to prevent extremely damaging consequences. Some think we needed to stop at 350 ppm, and are doomed to pay a heavy price.) Emissions are growing faster than was projected as recently as 2004, growing at about 3.3% per year.
The Core Issue
People engage in economic activity that uses energy from carbon emitting generation.
According to Pielke, the real definition of the energy/global warming/human development issue is encapsulated by this core equation:
People (population, or P) engage in economic activity (captured by GDP per capita) that uses energy (represented by estimates of the energy intensity of the economy, or TE) from carbon emitting generation (the carbon intensity of energy). The beauty of representing the issue this way is that it shows what is possible in terms of remediation--what we would have to do to fix the problem. It is represented as a problem that can be calculated using simple arithmetic--if you are (as I am) too lazy to do long division and multiplication of numbers with several digits, your calculator can do it for you without looking at any funny symbols. The importance of that is that anyone can verify Pielke's later points without depending on him or anyone else to say 'I did the math so you don't have to.' You can change some assumptions and look at their effects. This gets all the 'gurus' and opinion peddlers out of the way.
C = GDP/P x TE/GDP x C/TE
Framing the problem correctly has done more to solve big problems than almost anything you can think of. You'll see why.
Phrasing the problem as Pielke does shows exactly what levers we have available to address global warming. We can reduce population or economic growth, or increase energy intensity or carbon intensity.
Population management or accepting lower economic growth are not politically viable. In the developed world it would seem abhorrent, especially because the population that would need management would most likely be in the developing world, as would the lower economic growth. Neither solution is politically feasible. Pielke illustrated this by re-telling a story of a participant at the 2008 G8 summit, where a morning seminar focused on ways of reducing gas prices, while the afternoon session found them discussing ways of raising gas prices through caps or taxes on fossil fuels.
Which leaves technology. In my next piece on Pielke's lecture, we'll discuss the scale of change needed and how technology can be used most effectively. It will also bring out one of the few areas of his talk with which I disagree.
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