Inaction Is Not an Option
- Dan Lashof
- Director, Climate Center, Washington, D.C.
- Blog | About
- Posted April 20, 2009 in Solving Global Warming
Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) had a great editorial in Roll Call today. In it he argues for clean energy and climate change legislation to "make our region and our country stronger."
This is important because Senator Brown is one of the key Midwestern Democrats in the Senate whose vote is crucial to getting the 60 that will be needed to break an inevitable filibuster. Last year Senator Brown voted against ending a filibuster on the climate legislation that was then before the Senate. This year he is making the case for acting now:
Some people would say that our current economic crisis compels us to delay action on comprehensive climate change legislation. I disagree. Inaction is not an option. Capping carbon emissions can create new jobs in a clean energy economy. Without action, we face dangerous consequences. We risk the health of our citizens, the viability of our coastal areas, the productivity of our nation's farms, forests and fisheries, and the long-term economic and national security of our country.
The details will matter, of course. Senator Brown will rightly insist that climate legislation be designed in a way that encourages reinvestment in Ohio's manufacturing base, rather than outsourcing jobs and pollution to countries that have not yet enacted similar policies. This can be accomplished with the judicious use of a portion of the value of emission allowances established under a carbon cap to support efficiency improvements in energy intensive manufacturing plants. As Senator Brown says:
Done right, climate change legislation will improve our nation's competitiveness by creating new jobs and developing new technologies.
NRDC looks forward to working with Senator Brown to make sure we get it right, and get it done this year.
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Comments
Jim Bullis, Miastrada Co. — Apr 21 2009 12:49 PM
Bad action can be worse than inaction. Inefficient plug-in cars could be a great danger.
I have been campaigning for some time to point out that there are strong forces forming to shift from foreign oil as the source of energy for driving cars to electricity using the plug-in vehicle approach. The marginal response by the electric system to such plug-in vehicles is burning of more coal. The well done study by NRDC/EPRI showed that hybrid vehicles were actually degraded by conversion to plug-in operation, and NRDC concurred that under such conditions conversion to plug-in was not recommended.
A danger then appeared in the possibility that vehicles might be converted to plug-in operation while skipping the step of making that vehicle an efficient hybrid first.
Leading advocates of this include:
past President of Intel, Andy Grove,
(see: http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/energy/an-electric-plan-for-energy-resilience)
along with GM (see: http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/PDF/presentation-sm.pdf)
our California Governor, perhaps inadvertently, (see:
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/04/hybrid-hummer-c.html
and leading venture firm Kleiner Perkins by virtue of sponsoring the Fisker which is the Queen to the Hummer King, having even the same engine (see
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/04/behold-americas.html)
These extreme examples add to other powerful forces getting set for a coal powered future.
Warren Buffet has effectively endorsed this trend by invstment in US railroads and the leading Chinese electric car company.
Then add the list of plug-in enthusiasts, misguided by a premature lure of electric power.
I do note however, that electric power is a redeemable system when coal burning is no longer the marginal response.
I add a qualification that even coal fired electric power is not bad if only a very small amount of it is used.
The crisis we are heading for is the apparent disregard for efficiency as the primary goal.
With an emerging enthusiasm for inefficient plug-in vehicles, the demand for electric energy seems certain to go up, and it is going to be very difficult to legislate meaningful caps on CO2 emissions. And in the full circle, we could well end up with a country powered by coal, even more than China.
The "bad action" potential is that inefficient plug-in cars could get inappropriately wired into our system. Such seems destined to lead to greatly increased CO2 emissions, not lessened.