Climate interview, part 2
The timetable is really 2020? That means that we must truly accelerate efforts on all fronts. What can we do as individuals?
You can’t enjoy the long run unless you do the right things in the short run. We’ve only got a decade to make a big dent in fossil fuel use or deploy new carbon sinks in equivalent numbers. Anything slower means a disaster for today’s students.I don’t think we can advance on all fronts, given our 2020 emergency; we’d be better off spending our money on plug-in hybrids than on new rapid transit, for example. Reforming drivers worldwide takes too long.
A major makeover in a decade requires a lot of people working together, not separately. Individuals cannot do very much, in time for 2020, but they can–and must–persuade politicians to either get moving or retire.
What must the government do? When?I like Al Gore’s notion of eliminating payroll taxes (social security/medicare, unemployment; they’re the biggest part of withholding for most people) when a carbon fee kicks in to put a price on pollution.
This is really clever social engineering, not mere tax relief. Presently there are few ways to game the system and pay less taxes than your neighbor. But with the C-fee (a better phrase than carbon tax) in place, a more efficient car, better insulation, and car-pooling work like tax credits, not deductions. People love to game the system and the prospects of reducing their total taxes by a third will bring out all sorts of creativity that will reduce carbon emissions.
Second, it’s time to delegate substantial rule-making power to expert commissions. For example, the Federal Carbon Board might adjust the C-fee and emission caps, to ensure that national CO2 and smog goals are met, just as the Federal Reserve Board now adjusts the mortgage and credit card interest rates to ensure that inflation and unemployment targets are met. Third, we’ll need a Carbon “Makeover” Commission to mandate more efficient cars, trucks, planes, buildings, appliances, and manufacturing processes. Some of the C-fee money needs to support the development of the longer-term technologies, things that no company can currently undertake while remaining competitive. The commissioners will also need to quickly build demonstration projects such as deep-heat geothermal plants. They will need to make sure that oil and coal companies do not buy up the alternative fuel companies and then sit on their innovative patents until the clock runs out. This makeover opportunity offers the largest, cheapest, and fastest leverage on carbon emissions–which is why Congress cannot be left to deal with it, piece by piece.
It seems to me that your time table makes sense, given the global warming situation. I have always felt that most timetables are woefully inadequate to the point of seeming like proponents have their heads in the sand. Care to comment?Talking endlessly to buy time – and continue the high profits from oil, coal, and natural gas a little longer – has been the lobbying strategy since 1966, just as it was for the tobacco companies after the Surgeon General’s report in 1964.
All sorts of sensible proposals for C-free energy had their budgets axed by Ronald Reagan in 1982 and the rest of the world pretty much did the same thing. It guaranteed that coal use would soar. Now we’ve run out of time for long-run strategies and we are forced to focus on 2020–not agreeing to do something by then, but accomplishing the turn around by 2020.