Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of The Breakthrough Institute (where I am a Senior Fellow) have an absolutely excellent piece on climate policy and politics in Foreign Policy titled, "The End of Magical Climate Thinking." Here is how it begins:
You will no find a better analysis of U.S. climate politics anywhere. Have a look, and feel free to return here to discuss and debate.There was good reason to be hopeful in January 2009 that the election of Barack Obama would bring about America's long-awaited clean energy revolution. As president-elect, Obama had started to talk about energy policy in a way that no leader of either U.S. party had before. Promising to save the country from both severe recession and industrial decline, Obama described the transformation of the United States' energy economy as a defining challenge of his presidency -- an economic and national security imperative that Congress would fail to address at the country's peril.
But the reality fell far short of expectations. The Obama administration succumbed, like many others, to a sort of magical climate thinking that promised a painless and even prosperous transition to a low-carbon future with the tools already at hand. The only official within his administration to accurately grasp the technology challenges faced, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, was sidelined at crucial moments.
Here is the back story of how the Obama administration dramatically raised and then dashed America's -- and the world's -- hopes that 2009 would be a pivotal year for remaking our collective energy future.
15 comments:
Its foolish to expect international cooperation. The US should go it alone. Public funds should be used for basic research. The output of that research should be licensed to the private sector under a sort of 'GPL' like structure. In the end, commercialization can only happen through the private sector. Arpanet was a reseach project of limited utility. It wasn't until the private sector took over that innovation accelerated and the internet bloomed. A similar thing can happen in energy tech.
For example, if the US develeloped Thorium Reactor technology, we could sell it to the rest of the world and US innovators would make a lot of money (and pay a lot of taxes). This can certainly be done in a 20 to 30 year time scale.
"There was good reason to be hopeful in January 2009 that the election of Barack Obama would bring about America's long-awaited clean energy revolution."
Nope, there were no reasons whatsoever.
A good start on any truly-viable-for-sucess path forward will be, generally, opposed by the very organizations that are demanding that we get started.
The problem is enormously larger than any one person, no matter what the position they hold.
Feel good has trumped actually correct for over four decades now when US 'energy policy' is the subject.
I confess to being somewhat underwhelmed by the S&N piece as Iit seems to be a rehash of their earlier Breakthrough book. And this is coming from someone who completely applauds their seminal Death of Environmentalism piece. I certainly wasn't impressed by their blatant misrepresenation of the R&D committments in Waxman-Markey and the tarring and feathering of WRI (see here)
In fairness I do think they're right that the UN aint where future international action is going to happen (my bet is WTO). But then when have international fora ever been the place where meaningful action ever takes place?
Binding international targets would have been nice, but they're aren't strictly necessary - and it doesn't follow that in their absence that all that's left is big gov R&D. I just don't see any coherent argument of why latter follows from the failure of the former (is this where Roger tells me to buy his book I wonder?).
Overall their piece belies a very federal U.S. centric view of the world and ignores a lot of what is going on in other jurisdictions at both national and sub-national levels (e.g. California LCFS for example).
To be clear I'm not knocking the idea of aggressive gov't directed R&D as proposed by S&N. I just don't think it's sufficient and to believe otherwise is ... magical thinking :)
Roger - the link is to page five of the article.
edaniel said: Feel good has trumped actually correct for over four decades now when US 'energy policy' is the subject.
It has been longer than that (and it's not just US):
It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.
-- Jevons, The Coal Question, 1866
The Jevons Paradox questions the pervasive assumptioin -- common in colloquial discourse and even in many academic discussions -- that sustainability emerges as a passive consequence of consuming less. This assumption comes in two versions. The pessimistic version suggests that it is necessary for people voluntarily to reduce their resource consumption in order to become more sustainable. Examples might include taking shorter or colder showers, using public transportation, drinking tap water rather than bottled, or eating less meat. This is sometimes known as the sackcloth-and-ashes approach to sustainability. The optimistic version, preferred by many economists and most politicians, is that a future of technological innovations and the shift to a service-and-information economy will reduce our consumption of resources to such an extent that we will become sustainable without requiring people to sacrifice the things that they enjoy.
-- The Jevons paradox and the myth of resource efficiency improvements
There was NO good reason to hope that Obama's election would have changed politics or the way forward. Thoughts to the contrary are merely expressions of wishful thinking as Obama has never demonstrated shaping reality to match his rhetoric. He continues to demonstrate how underwhelming his rhetoric delivers on raised hopes for a variety of issues.
My hope is that scientists have learned to require politicians to prove their case before agreeing to shill for those pols in return for juicy grants.
no alternative energy source or technology exists that can replace current US consumption and physics makes it unlikely one can be found
if you can't raise the bridge then lower the river, problem is this comes with many many consequences not even Obama would want to deal with nor has he shown any inclination whatsoever in that direction
if one looks at the world energy situation much of this whole line of discussion is moot anyway......consumption will be lowered whether people like it or are ready for it
technology doesn't solve our social problems
Roger, just to let you know, you've been quoted by Peter Foster in the National Post...
Cheers
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/01/19/peter-foster-ipcc-meltdown.aspx
-4-Thanks, fixed!
-8-Thanks!
2009 was a great year- we have seen the peaking and apparently rapid decline of the AGW meme's credibility.
BTW- Carl's assertion, that technology does not solve social problems, is simply incorrect.
"no alternative energy source or technology exists that can replace current US consumption and physics makes it unlikely one can be found"
Wrong--thorium reactor technology can MORE than replace US and world energy needs at a fraction of the amount of uranium that is being mined now. The physical reality of this was conclusively proved back in the 1950s and 60s, then abandoned by the US because it was not compatible with the nuclear technologies developed for nuclear weapons.
There isn't going to be a 'national' or 'international' one size fits all solution...at least not in my lifetime.
case in point..more then 50% of South Carolina's electricity is from nuclear. They have below average electricity rates. Yet Connecticut produces almost 50% of its electricity from nuclear and they have the 2nd or 3rd highest electricity rates in the nation.
There must be localized reasons why nuclear is a cost effective source of energy in South Carolina and its not cost effective in Connecticut. (Most likely proximity to population centers and regulatory environment)
Germany built a Thorium reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300
Then knocked it down again...
India seem to have picked up the baton:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/qa-thorium-reactor-designer-ratan-kumar-sinha
We'll see.
Since the problem to be solved is imaginary, even the limited "success" Obama et al. have had in "tackling" it is damaging. His failure is at the hands of the grinding mill wheel of reality.
Thorium is nice, but not crucial. The world-wide revelation of practically unlimited supplies of frac-NG and associated liquid oil has economically put "paid" to the energy crisis. E.g.: Israel and India, to pick two at random, will be in surplus for some time to come.
What has President Obama accomplished that four presidents before him failed to accomplish? According to MSNBC, today's approval to construct two nuclear reactors is the first since 1978.
Of course to stabilize U.S. domestic carbon emissions this is but a drop in the bucket. Perhaps less than a drop. Yet in the wake of Fukushima it is an encouraging and significant first step.
Indeed one might be tempted to confuse the combination of this approval and the recent denial of the fast track Keystone Pipeline application as the makings of green energy policy.
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