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Clock is ticking
CEOs, Top Brass Turn Up the Temperature in D.C.
May2007
It appears that the last person willing to turn out the lights on climate change inaction will be in the White House.
The terms of the climate debate have changed dramatically over the past six months. The scientific case for a human role in climate change has become definitive. For their own reasons, business executives and military experts are calling for a policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.
Yet the White House—joined by recalcitrants in Congress—won’t hear of setting mandatory targets and timetables.
One can’t help remembering Ronald Reagan’s famous line about government being the problem, not the solution.
While government cannot solve the climate problem single-handedly, its role is important. Government sets the rules that guide the workings of the energy, agriculture, and other marketplaces that will have a hand in reducing emissions. Like a baseball strike zone, the shape of the rules will influence the outcome of the play.
Someone needs to be in charge of setting the strike zone’s boundaries.
The urgency of acting soon to begin ramping down greenhouse gas emissions has grown. In a series of three reports issued this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change laid out the facts: 1) Greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities are changing the climate, 2) The consequences are likely to be serious throughout the world, from the polar regions to the tropics, and 3) energy efficiency and other measures to reduce emissions can be implemented without taking a harmful bite out of the global economy, and in some cases, will save money.
The third report, released on May 4, is particularly important for navigating the turbulent politics of adopting and enforcing an emissions-capping climate policy.
To prevent global warming from pushing the climate into a red zone of dangerous consequences, scientists have identified 450 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide—today’s level is about 380 ppm—as a threshold humanity would do well not to cross.
Overall, the report estimates that stabilizing the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas load at 445 to 535 ppm would reduce the global economy’s average annual growth rate less than 0.12 percent each year through 2030. In addition, reducing emissions would provide “co-benefits,” including cleaner air.
Setting a carbon price of $100 per ton—which works out to 25 cents per gallon of gasoline and 2 cents per kilowatt-hour of coal-generated electricity—would result in a cost-effective emissions reduction potential equivalent to 16 to 31 gigatons of CO2, about 33 to 63 percent of 2004 levels.
Not every greenhouse gas reduction strategy need take money out of the economy. Measures that have “net negative costs”—i.e., not a free lunch, but a lunch you are paid to eat—could cut emissions by the equivalent of 6 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2030, about 12 percent of total 2004 emissions, the report estimated.
By 2030, the report continued, 30 percent of projected emissions from buildings could be eliminated at a profit.
Many barriers hinder the adoption of economically sensible efficiency measures, however. Among them are lack of information, institutional inertia, and perverse economic drivers. For example, landlords have no incentive to front higher capital costs of energy-efficient cooling equipment, since the tenants will pay the higher operating costs.
In any event, the consequence of putting off emissions reductions is likely to be higher costs and lost economic opportunities. Business leaders understand this. A report published earlier this year by the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an alliance of corporations and environmental organizations, put it this way: “Action sooner rather than later preserves valuable response options, narrows the uncertainties associated with changes to the climate, and should lower the cost of mitigation and adaptation.”
The partnership, which advocates an economy-wide cap-and-trade plan to cut emissions, has taken on some interesting new partners, including oil, chemical, and heavy manufacturing companies. New members that have joined since the report’s publication include Shell and ConocoPhillips (oil), Dow (chemicals), Siemens (industrial technology), and Alcan (aluminum).
Not far behind the CEOs are senior military experts who are concerned about the impacts of climate change on national security. Last month, a panel of retired generals and flag officers published a report concluding that climate change is a “threat multiplier” that threatens to exacerbate instability in some of the world’s most troubled regions.
The panel recommended that the federal government integrate climate change into security and defense strategies, and get back into the international arena to negotiate emissions reduction agreements.
The report authors were retirees whose defense credentials are beyond dispute. For example, panel members included General Gordon R. Sullivan, USA (ret.), former Army Chief of Staff; Vice Admiral Paul G. Gaffney II, USN (ret.), former Chief of Naval Operations; and General Anthony Zinni, USMC (ret.), former commander of Central Command.
The leading lights of the nation’s business and defense establishments are providing the nation’s elected leaders with sage advice that ought not to be dismissed merely because it does not comport with ideological obsessions or narrow political agendas.
The bosses and brass have spoken. It’s time for Washington to pay attention and act.
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