CNN’s Anjali Rao talks with Jonathan Lash about the latest developments in the U.S. and China to address global warming.
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So this bill is going to have a strong impact on how businesses operate in the U.S. and with other countries. How exactly?
It imposes a cap on overall CO2 emissions in the United States and then reduces that cap over forty years. Every other piece of environmental legislation I’ve worked on has a single endpoint; you put this machine on your smokestack, and you’re done. This says that the whole economy is going to change by 2020, and more by 2030, and more by 2040. It changes everything.
Your organization strongly supports this, but other environmental outfits such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are opposed to it. Let me just read you something, Greenpeace says that “despite Barack Obama’s earlier commitment to the environment, we are now watching him put his full support behind a bill that chooses politics over science, elevates industry interests over national interests.” How do you respond to that?
I think my friends at Greenpeace are just wrong on this one. It is actually a stronger bill than the President promised during his campaign. And as I said, it’s going to completely change the U.S. economy. It’s the first statement of political will from the world’s largest source of global warming emissions. It’s important.
Do you think that Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and others like them can be brought around to it?
Well, they want more. We’d all like to see more. It’s an urgent problem. But we have to do something. We don’t have a choice of a better bill. We have this bill or nothing.
You said also that this bill is going to be instrumental in showing the world that the U.S. is really ready to take the lead here, insofar as tackling climate change. You’re obviously in Hong Kong here, on your way to China, which is one of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters. What are your hopes for China?
There’s no solution to this problem without the U.S, and there’s no solution without China. China has become an enormous innovator in this field, promoting renewable energy at a pace no one believed as possible five years ago, and has to do more. In the end, the rest of the world needs China and the U.S. to agree to reduce emissions, and to begin to shift to the low carbon economy of tomorrow.
Sounds like you’re optimistic then about what China can contribute here.
I’ve just been stunned at the way that China is consuming policy ideas, and developing new options. I think the possibilities are enormous, but they want to see commitment by the U.S. And vice versa.
Which you think they’ll get that eventually?
I do. I think this is the moment. The political will is there.
Tim Herzog, Director of Online Communications
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2 Comments
Other have said: "I think
Other have said:
"I think this is the moment. The political will is there."
"We have this bill or nothing."
Sorry but I don't agree with either of these two statements and here is why.
When I post something to a site I normally try and explain my position; change your mind to my belief and offer some type of suggestion or recommendation to improve what we are trying to accomplish. So here goes.
First the comment 'the political will is there'; I don't believe that a consensus still exists that Cap and Trade is the best approach for American. It may have been a consensus at one time but not now. And, as each day passes I believe we get further and further from being able to pass this legislation. There is a significant difference between 'political will' and the 'will of the people'. Some people might believe we have the political will at the moment while not realizing at the time that we do not have the 'will of the people' on our side. I think that is the case with the Cap and Trade bill.
As far as the second statement of “we have this bill or nothing” all I can say is bills come and go all the time. Into and out of committees, some get approved in the House and other never see the light of day. Heck sometime the President even vetoes one of them LOL
So here is where I am coming from. I have worked in the public utility sector for about 20 years. I have visited and spoke with many CEO, CFO and/or operational plant managers at a lot of different types of power plants. I also understand capitalism quite well and with this knowledge in hand believe we are heading in the wrong direction for the following reasons.
Burning coal is dirty and I don't care how you slice the pie. I also don't care if you believe that global warming is REAL or NOT. I also wouldn't consider “clean coal” clean if you captured 100% of the CO2 either. There is still a whole bunch of other stuff coming out the stack, in the fly ash, in the evaporator and leaching ponds, and in the chemicals used to treat the water for the plant. In short; using coal to generate about 40% of our electricity just might not be in the best interest of the American people given what we know about coal today. There are also other considerations like the mining of coal, the transportation, the grinding and the processing of coal to try and get it cleaned up before we burn it. Before you know it, clean coal will become just like clean nuclear – too expensive to build and too expensive to use as a fuel to generate electricity. Yet here we are talking about taxing coal so we can continue to use it well into some future date 20-30 years from now.
If I look at coal and Cap and Trade the only thing I see is more dirty power for 40% of our electrical energy. Sure Cap and Trade will put a cap on carbon and tax it and we might even pass that tax [or the cost of using it] through to the consumer. We will also capture some percentage of the CO2, buy and sell and trade some of the free credits on Wall Street. We have even built in provisions to give people living below some magical number a tax credit just so we can continue burn coal. Now none of the above things are cast in concrete yet or may never even come to pass since the President hasn't signed anything yet.
There are so many alternatives to burning coal, capping carbon and trading credits and so little space here to discuss them. We seem to get on these band wagons heading down a hill and never even try to see if the brakes work before we start. Cap and Trade has been tried in Europe and other countries and to date, they are still a work in progress.
I have followed solar, geothermal, wind, biomass, nuclear and other energy options for many years. Just the other day I came across an interesting article in Scientific American [written in 2008] about how we can use the solar option to become energy independent in just 40 years. Now that's not nearly fast enough to suit me but we can talk about speeding up the process later if you like. We could if we CHOOSE to; cut carbon emissions quickly instead of over a 10-40 year period. You can read this Scientific American article here:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-gra...
Now I am certain you can find lots of reasons for not using solar but please take the time to at least read a few of the 6 pages and some of the 706 comments before you say this is just another fantasy. You will be amazed at how quickly technology is making solar a valid option. Also within the 706 reader comments are the comments of the original authors. They answer many of the typical nay sayer questions in excellent detail explaining how the plan could work.
I like solar but in my not so humble opinion it is NOT the complete answer. It is however so much better than coal it doesn't even deserve comparison. You install a solar panel and it just sits there producing power for about the next 20-30 years. You don't have to dig up the fuel, grind it, transport it, burn it, take away the ash, pump the CO2 into the ground AND come along 20 years later and clean up the mess. True you have to mine the raw materials and periodically recycle the panels and make more of them but that's child play compared to what we do for coal. And if you add up all the cost associated with coal and solar I'll bet you a steak dinner that they are so close to the same price per KW it doesn't make any difference which one you use to make power. It just so happens that one is a whole lot cleaner [greener?] than the other. To put it in very simple terms – the cost of sunshine is not expected to change in the next 1000 years; BUT the cost of coal is going to go up every year.
It's no longer even a question in my own mind that we have some vary valid alternatives to dirty energy sources. The only question I have is, can we build ENOUGH renewable energy sources FAST ENOUGH to make our carbon footprint SMALL enough to save the planet. Are you really WILLING to wait another 10-40 years for Cap and Trade to significantly improve our environment?
Cap and Trade to me is like saying - lets throw a 100 darts at a dart board and see if we hit the bulls eye. Is the target CO2 reduction? Is it more renewable energy; more conservation; better building construction and trying to eliminate the importing of foreign oil? This is why I don't think Cap and Trade will ever pass in its current form. It is not the fact that EVERYTHING we want to do is in the bill; it is just that EVERYTHING is IN the bill. It's like trying to fix 30 years of neglecting your teeth in one visit to the dentist office. I guess you could ask a further question like; what will dentists even be doing 20 years from now?
I will bet you another one of those steak dinners that if you asked 10,000 voters to give you a a YES or NO answer if global warming is REAL; you might be very surprised at the answers you get. Try it – ask you friends and neighbors the YES or NO question and see what you get; I have. While there is a significant amount of data suggesting global warming is real there is also some data suggesting it is not. Instead of arguing about if it IS or IS NOT real, wouldn't we be better off if we just did what was in the best interest of our country?
Earlier I promised to make some recommendations even if I couldn't change your mind so here they are.
# 1 I recommend a selective carbon tax instead of the broad approach of Cap and Trade. Cap and Trade as written is too complex and the American people no longer trust their government legislators, special interest groups and lobbyists to do what is in their best interest. The American people are sick and tired of their representatives not even reading something before they buy into it.
# 2 I recommend an immediate $1.00/gallon gasoline tax increase. I would also accept a phased in $.25/year/gallon increase if necessary to get it passed. Why only gasoline? Well for one reason; it would raise $136,000,000,000 dollars a year in taxes. Taxing only gasoline would NOT have a SIGNIFICANT impact on shipping, rail, farm or other energy consumers who might be using natural gas, propane, heating oils or diesel fuels. The following stipulation must also be a part of the gas tax bill. It would be a 90% 10% tax. The government would only get to keep 10% of the taxes to administer the program and the other 90% would go directly to fund renewable energy projects.
So do you have your calculator out yet? How many Concentrating Solar Power [CSP], Photovoltaic [PV] and geothermal power plants do you think we can build with lets say $100,000,000,000 a year. How many solar panels do you think we can install on homes if we spent $10 billion dollars each year for that purpose. Wait a minute; so far we haven't even spent our first years tax revenues yet. So lets build a billion dollar polycrystalline silicon plant and give the manufacturers of solar panels here in the U.S. the raw materials for free – the government can run the plant out of their 10% commission if they think they can do the job. My guess is that it would cost about $50 million a year to run it. This might be fun - maybe it's time for some of the people in the Washington to actually see how a real business works.
We are still not out of money yet so lets give about 10 of our best solar manufactures here in the U.S. a $1 billion dollars each to increase production. For example; a billion dollars should buy Nanosolar another 100 roll to roll thin film machines. The one [1] they have now is creating about 1000 Megawatts a year so 100 should give us a good bump in production and some real serious solar power number to work with. Lets also give a billion to First Solar to build a couple of new production plants. They are already producing solar for less than $1.00/watt so they say.
There is nothing new and magical we need to do to make this happen. We know how to build the wind turbines, geothermal, CSP and PV power plants. We already know how to build hybrid and electric vehicles and create bio fuels. We know how to transmit power across the country and we do it every day. We do not have to invent or wait for some new technology to make it all happen we just need some LEADERSHIP.
When gasoline prices peaked in 2008 we used 4,500,000,000 [4.5 billion] fewer gallons of gasoline than we did in 2007. If you care to calculates the carbon savings you can use either 18 or 20 lbs/gallon since different people use different values. In either case, that is one heck of a lot of CARBON we didn't put into the air of our planet. AND we didn't have to create any new government agencies, cap carbon at some magical number or trade carbon credits on some exchange. We did it by simply raising the price of gasoline by about a $1.00/gallon.
In summary, these are just a couple of ideas. Someday our children will look back at us and say; what in the world took our parents so long to realize what they were doing? Or will they look back and say why on earth did they let lobbyists write the laws.
As citizens we need to stand up and say enough is enough. We need to just start saying no to some political leaders who are so arrogant they believe that they don't even have to read a piece of legislation before they sign it. We also need to tell some of our special interest groups and lobbyists to get out of our White House every once in a while.
Thank you for listening
tomgarven@hotmail.com
"We have this bill or
"We have this bill or nothing."?
Tell that to the groups working with the Senate right now to improve the grave flaws that Greenpeace, the Center for Biological Diversity and many scientists have identified. I suggest WRI help the process along rather than announce on national television we have to accept a flawed bill. Aren't you an activist group?