Joe Romm: Yes, the Pope supports a carbon price. Economists just ‘misinterpreted the Encyclical’

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, October 7, 2015

The Pope’s climate encyclical does not oppose carbon pricing. Quite the reverse, as we will see.

Leading climate economists who support putting a price on carbon, including William Nordhaus and Robert Stavins, have criticized the Pope for supposedly opposing or ignoring carbon taxes and/or carbon pricing.

I have long thought that some people were misreading and overemphasizing one paragraph in the encyclical at the expense of others that are clearly supportive of carbon pricing. This week I was able to get some insight from economist and longtime Vatican observer, Anthony Annett, a 15-year veteran of the International Monetary Fund who is a climate change and sustainable development advisor at Columbia’s Earth Institute and Religions for Peace.

Annett worked with the Vatican in the run-up to the encyclical. In April, he helped organize a Vatican event on climate change co-sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. And he co-authored detailed remarks on business and market insights and implications of the Encyclical delivered at the Vatican press conference for the encyclical, named Laudato Si’.

“My view is that Nordhaus misinterpreted the encyclical,” Annett told me. “First, the Pope is criticizing the potential abuse of carbon credits, not ruling them out completely. Second, the Pope says nothing explicitly about carbon taxes. And later on he says that business must bear the full social cost of its activity — which really implies putting a price on carbon.”

Before focusing on the source of the misinterpretation, let me first underscore the central point that Pope Francis implicitly — indeed, it’s almost explicit — calls for pricing carbon. Paragraph 167 of the encyclical explains that the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio echoes the 1972 Stockholm Declaration and “enshrined international cooperation to care for the ecosystem of the entire earth, the obligation of those who cause pollution to assume its costs, and the duty to assess the environmental impact of given projects and works.”

Polluters pay. They are obligated to assume the costs of polluting. To ensure there is no ambiguity about what he is saying, the pope repeats and expands the message a little later.

“As long as production is increased, little concern is given to whether it is at the cost of future resources or the health of the environment,” explains the Pope in paragraph 195. He is explicitly critiquing the way businesses are driven to pursue “maximization of profits, frequently isolated from other considerations.” The Pope immediately continues, “as long as the clearing of a forest increases production, no one calculates the losses entailed in the desertification of the land, the harm done to biodiversity or the increased pollution.”

The Pope then directly spells out a fairly explicit call for putting a price on carbon equal to its “social costs”:

In a word, businesses profit by calculating and paying only a fraction of the costs involved. Yet only when “the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations,” can those actions be considered ethical.

In short, ethics requires the full social costs of actions that destroy a livable climate must be made clear to all and “fully borne by those who incur them.” Again, that seems like a fairly unambiguous endorsement for carbon pricing and for establishing a social cost of carbon. The Pope is quoting his predecessor, Benedict, from a 2009 Encyclical Letter, which underscores the fact that this is not a new (or controversial) position from the Vatican.

A man looks at a copy of Pope Francis’ encyclical on sale at the Vatican bookshop, in Rome, Thursday, June 18, 2015. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/ANDREW MEDICHINI

Despite the Pope’s straightforward statements in support of carbon pricing, Yale climate economist William Nordhaus just wrote an entire essay called “The Pope & the Market” in the October 8 issue of The New York Review of Books. He focused on this theme: “My major point is that the encyclical overlooks the central part that markets, particularly market-based environmental policies such as carbon pricing, must play if countries are to make substantial progress in slowing global warming.”

Similarly, Robert Stavins, Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, told the New York Times in June, “I respect what the Pope says about the need for action, but this is out of step with the thinking and the work of informed policy analysts around the world, who recognize that we can do more, faster, and better with the use of market-based policy instruments — carbon taxes and/or cap-and-trade systems.” On Monday, Stavins offered a lengthy defense of his position on his blog.

So what is the source of this confusion?

It is almost entirely due to paragraph 171 — set between the two endorsements of carbon pricing cited above. It states in full:

The strategy of buying and selling “carbon credits” can lead to a new form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors.

Stavins writes, “In surprisingly specific and unambiguous language, the encyclical rejects outright ‘carbon credits’ as part of a solution to the problem.” Stavins is correct that the encyclical is specific. But the term “carbon credits” — “crediti di emissione” in the Italian version — is actually quite ambiguous.

When I read it, I thought it was quite unclear exactly what the encyclical was attacking, which is why I have been trying to get some clarification.

Indeed, Stavins himself notes in his next paragraph:

If the references to “carbon credits” were intended to refer only to offset systems (such as the Clean Development Mechanism [CDM]) and not to cap-and-trade systems, then I would be much less concerned about the Pope’s complaints. However, the encyclical does not make the distinction. Indeed, I doubt that the authors of the encyclical recognize the difference, and unfortunately, readers of the encyclical will likewise lump together all carbon markets, which is what some policy makers also do, unfortunately.

Carbon credits often refer to offsets in both English and Italian. Offsets are quite problematic, since they involve letting people sell credits for emission reduction projects that might have occurred anyway. That’s why I have written so many posts critical of domestic and international offsets (especially CDM) often using the term “rip-offsets. Even in 2015, we still see headlines exposing the abuse of CDM credits, such as “Russian industry paid to increase emissions under UN carbon credits scheme.”

Given how sophisticated and detailed the analysis is in the encyclical — and given the repeated embrace of the underlying principles of carbon pricing — I thought the authors probably meant to criticize offsets and dubious CDM projects. But the ambiguity of the “carbon credits” paragraph lent itself to misinterpretation. Without further clarification from the Vatican itself, I can understand why people took that paragraph as critical of carbon trading — although I still don’t understand how one can read the encyclical and think the Pope opposes carbon pricing. I’d urge the Vatican to issue a formal statement clarifying the matter as we head toward Paris, where a great many countries will be advocating carbon trading.

As for the encyclical’s broader critique of capitalism as it is currently practiced, it seems pretty clear that we have turned the global economy into a giant Ponzi scheme that betrays our children and is doomed to collapse. And that’s without even considering issues of income inequality.

Finally, we just learned that the new Chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the former Vice Chair, Korean economist Hoesung Lee. Lee explains in this video that if he had to choose the single most important policy for addressing climate change, it would be putting a price on carbon. A few have dissed him for such a view, but the fact is that we have ignored the call to action by the IPCC and others for so long, we’ve really limited the strategies available to us.

By any reasonable analysis, a serious and rising carbon price is the sine qua non for keeping total global warming below 2 °C and averting catastrophic climate change. The plausible alternatives are far less market-friendly strategies. That’s a key reason why so many countries and governments — from the EU to China to California — embrace carbon pricing. With the support of the Pope and other key international leaders, it seems likely this crucial policy will become even more widely used in the years ahead.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/10/07/3709329/pope-carbon-price-encyclical/

James Hansen: A Fork in the Road

We stand at a fork in the road. Conventional oil and gas supplies are limited. We can move down the path of dirtier more carbon-intensive unconventional fossil-fuels, digging up the dirtiest tar sands and tar shales, hydrofracking for gas, continued mountain-top removal and mechanized destructive long-wall coal mining. Or we can choose the alternative path of clean energies and energy efficiency.

The climate science is crystal clear. We cannot go down the path of the dirty fuels without guaranteeing that the climate system passes tipping points, leaving our children and grandchildren a situation out of their control, a situation of our making. Unstable ice sheets will lead to continually rising seas and devastation of coastal cities worldwide. A large fraction of Earth's species will be driven to extinction by the combination of shifting climate zones and other stresses. Summer heat waves, scorching droughts, and intense wildfires will become more frequent and extreme. At other times and places, the warmer water bodies and increased evaporation will power stronger storms, heavier rains, greater floods.

The economics is crystal clear. We are all better off if fossil fuels are made to pay their honest costs to society. We must collect a gradually rising fee from fossil fuel companies at the source, the domestic mine or port of entry, distributing the funds to the public on a per capita basis. This approach will provide the business community and entrepreneurs the incentives to develop clean energy and energy-efficient products, and the public will have the resources to make changes.

This approach is transparent, built on conservative principles. Not one dime to the government.

The alternative is to slake fossil fuel addiction, forcing the public to continue to subsidize fossil fuels. And hammer the public with more pollution. The public must pay the medical costs for all pollution effects. The public will pay costs caused by climate change. Fossil fuel moguls get richer, we get poorer. Our children are screwed. Our well-oiled coal-fired government pretends to not understand.

Joe Nocera was polite, but he does not understand basic economics. If a rising price is placed on carbon, the tar sands will be left in the ground where they belong. And the remarkable life and landscape of the original North American people will be preserved.

Joe Nocera quoted a private comment from a note explaining that I could not promise I would be back in New York to meet him. But he did not mention the contents of the e-mail that I sent him with information about the subject we were to discuss. The entire e-mail is copied below.

Jim Hansen

Joe [Nocera], Here are some relevant words from the draft of a paper that I am working on:

Transition to a post-fossil fuel world of clean energies will not occur as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy. Fossil fuels are cheap only because they are subsidized and do not pay their costs to society. Air and water pollution from fossil fuel extraction and use have high costs in human health, food production, and natural ecosystems, with costs borne by the public. Costs of climate change and ocean acidification also are borne by the public, especially young people and future generations.

Thus the essential underlying policy, albeit not sufficient, is for emissions of CO2 to come with a price that allows these costs to be internalized within the economics of energy use. Because so much energy is used through expensive capital stock, the price should rise in a predictable way to enable people and businesses to efficiently adjust lifestyles and investments to minimize costs.

An economic analysis indicates that a tax beginning at $15/tCO2 and rising $10/tCO2 each year would reduce emissions in the U.S. by 30% within 10 years. Such a reduction is more than 10 times as great as the carbon content of tar sands oil carried by the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (830,000 barrels/day). Reduced oil demand would be nearly six times the pipeline capacity, thus rendering it superfluous.

A rising carbon price is the sine qua non for fossil fuel phase out, but it is not sufficient. Investment is needed in energy RD&D (research, development and demonstration) in new technologies such as low-loss smart electric grids, electrical vehicles interacting effectively with the power grid, and energy storage for intermittent renewable energy. Nuclear power has made major contributions to climate change mitigation and mortality prevention, and advanced nuclear reactor designs can address safety, nuclear waste, and weapons proliferation issues that have limited prior use of nuclear power, but governments need to provide a regulatory environment that supports timely construction of approved designs to limit costs. etc.

Jim Hansen

James Hansen: Game Over for the Climate

Game Over for the Climate

by James Hansen, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, May 10, 2012


GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50% of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.

If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.

The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.

We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 ppm over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 ppm. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 ppm — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.

We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.

But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.

President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.

The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.

James Hansen directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is the author of “Storms of My Grandchildren.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html

Ted Turner visits Norway and Svalbard: "Climate Change Humanity's Most Serious Problem"

Ted Turner: Climate Change Humanity's Most Serious Problem

SVALBARD, Norway, June 23, 2011 (ENS) - Today, on a warm day very close to the Arctic Circle, board members of the UN Foundation, including Founder and Chairman Ted Turner, got a close look at what effects climate change is having on the Arctic.

After their annual Board of Directors meeting in Oslo, several directors traveled to Svalbard, the world's northernmost community. They journeyed up a fjord to the foot of a receding glacier with scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute.

Northern Polar Institute Research Director Kim Holmen, left, with UN Foundation Board Chairman Ted Turner and President Timothy Wirth, June 23, 2011 (photo by Stuart Ramson courtesy UN Foundation).

Turner told reporters on a teleconference today, "They pointed out to us while looking at the glacier that it is receding every year due to global climate change. The temperature here at the high latitudes changes more rapidly than it does in the temperate zones."

Based on observations to date, the scientists projected that this year the extent of Arctic sea ice will be smaller than it has ever been, even smaller than in the previous record low year of 2007.

Among the board members visiting Svalbard was Gro Harlem Brundtland, a physician who served three terms as Prime Minister of Norway in the 1980s and 1990s, and then became director general of the World Health Organization.

As chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development in the 1980s, Brundtland created the concept of sustainable development and provided the momentum for the UN's 1992 Earth Summit. She now serves as a Special Envoy on Climate Change for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Brundtland told reporters on the call that the scientists informed the group that ocean waters have heated up over the past decade at least 1 °C to a depth of 1,000 meters. "This is a dramatic change in a short period of time due to the changes humanity is causing by how we are acting," Brundtland said.

Asked what can be done to convince and persuade climate skeptics and deniers to recognize what so many scientists know and are trying to communicate so urgently, Turner said, "That's a very good question. If we knew the answer to it, we'd already have an energy policy in this country," he said, referring to his home country of the United States. [Too bad he sold CNN -- they are one of the worst as far as climate change coverage and even fired their entire science journalist staff when they began to talk about it.]

"We just have to keep working as we're doing now to get as much publicity as we can for the facts," said Turner. "The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of recognizing climate change."

"This is the most serious and complex problem humanity has ever faced, so it's easy to see how some people don't get it," said Turner. "We have to do all we can to convince and persuade the public of what the scientists tell us."

Gro Harlem Brundtland addresses the New Africa Connections conference. (Photo by Stuart Ramson courtesy UNF)

Brundtland said, "It is clear that action has been too slow, unbelievably slow - because you can take action."

"In 1991 we introduced a carbon tax on oil and gas production from the Norwegian continental shelf. We were warned that it would kill the oil and gas industry, but we showed the world. Our industry is fine," Brundtland said. "They improved the technology to cut the level of pollution per ton of oil extraction."

"I have difficulty understanding why the system has been so slow to move," she said. "We must continue to work with the private sector, not just with governments. The most progressive people in the private sector can help us to move forward. The UN Foundation is trying to promote this cooperation."

Timothy Wirth, the former U.S. senator from Colorado who now serves as president of the UN Foundation, said the impacts of climate change being felt across the United States this year will convince many people.

"While you can't predict exactly from the climate models what will happen, there has been an increase in drought, fires and flooding happening in the United States," Wirth said. "The dramatic climate impact is with us already. Slowly but surely people are going to connect the dots."

Members of the Norwegian royal family, Crown Princess Mette-Merit, left, Queen Sonja, center left, and Crown Prince Haakon, right, join board members of the UN Foundation, including Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, center right, and UNF Founder and Chairman Ted Turner, center 2nd-row, Oslo, Norway, June 20, 2011 (Photo by Stuart Ramson courtesy UNF)

"Happily," said Wirth, "there are people like weather forecasters that have come together in a group to decide how they will explain climate change when talking about the weather. That will be extremely important. And we have to do a better job of helping the scientific community to get their facts out. We must mount an agressive program to go after the deniers, countering their untruths."

On Friday, the board members will join Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, for a visit to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The UN Foundation helped establish the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an effort supported by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, to establish a universal repository of the world's crop seeds.

The vault, which officially opened in February 2008, is designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections around the world. It was created to ensure access to crops should species be lost to climate change or new plant diseases, to help meet the needs of an expanding population, and to provide a back-up library of seeds should any of the world's seed collections be depleted.

Kofi Annan addresses the New African Connections conference (Photo by Stuart Ramson courtesy UNF)

The UN Foundation Board of Directors participated in New African Connections, a high-level conference in Oslo June 21-22 that explored creative solutions and partnerships in the areas of health care, finance and new technologies to advance development in Africa. Brundtland and Turner and fellow board member Kofi Annan of Ghana, who served as UN secretary-general from 1997 through 2006, were featured speakers on a keynote panel focusing on public-private partnerships and innovation in health.

"We've got to match 21st century innovation with smart partnerships if we are going to successfully address poverty, climate change and global health," said Wirth. "This week's meetings in Norway confirm not only how far we've come but how much we can do to harness the power of innovation."

The United Nations Foundation is committed to addressing the problem of climate change due to human activity by reducing its own carbon emissions and offsetting the emissions that cannot be eliminated.

Every year the foundation calculates its cumulative carbon dioxide emissions at our Washington, DC, and New York City offices and purchases an equivalent amount of carbon offsets from a reforestation project in the Sierra Gorda Mountains of Mexico.

The UN Foundation, a public charity, originated in 1998 when Turner, founder of the cable news network CNN, gave an historic $1 billion gift to support UN causes and activities and created the United Nations Foundation to administer the gift.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2011/2011-06-23-01.html

James Hansen on why he’s disappointed that we did not show more leadership at the Copenhagen, “Cap and Fade,” Climategate, and more

James Hansen on why he’s disappointed that we did not show more leadership at the Copenhagen summit, “Cap and Fade,” Climategate, and more


Democracy Now, December 22, 2009

We speak with the nation’s leading climate scientist, James Hansen. He wasn’t at the Copenhagen climate summit and explains why he thinks it’s ultimately better for the planet that the talks collapsed. We also speak with with Dr. Hansen about his new book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity, and much more. [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: We are just back from Copenhagen. Even as global criticism of the proceedings and final outcome of the two-week climate summit in Copenhagen continues to mount, the United Nations is trying to put a positive spin on the non-binding Copenhagen Accord. Speaking to reporters Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon insisted the accord was “quite a significant achievement.”

SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN KI-MOON: While I’m satisfied that we sealed a deal, I’m aware that the outcome of the Copenhagen conference, including the Copenhagen Accord, did not go as far as many would have hoped. Nonetheless, they represent a beginning, an essential beginning. We have taken an important step in the right direction.

AMY GOODMAN: Today I’m joined by the scientist who first convinced the world to take notice of the looming problem of global warming back in the 1980s. Yes, I’m talking about the nation’s leading climate scientist, James Hansen.

But the outspoken director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies wasn’t at Copenhagen. He decided to sit out the climate conference, saying it would be better for the planet if the summit ended in collapse.

James Hansen also teaches at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. He’s just out with his first book; it’s called Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth [about] the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity..

Welcome to Democracy Now!

JAMES HANSEN: Thanks for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Hansen, start off with why you weren’t at Copenhagen. I mean, this is your thing. It was the global warming summit of summits.

JAMES HANSEN: Well, they were talking about having a cap-and-trade-with-offsets agreement, which is analogous to the Kyoto Protocol, which was disastrous. Before the Kyoto Protocol, global emissions of carbon dioxide were going up one-and-a-half percent per year. After the accord, they went up three percent per year. That approach simply won’t work.

And I’m actually quite pleased with what happened at Copenhagen, because now we have basically a blank slate. We have China and the United States talking to each other, and it’s absolutely essential. Those are the two big players that have to come to an agreement. But it has to be an honest agreement, one which addresses the basic problem. And that is that fossil fuels are the cheapest source of energy on the planet. And unless we address that and put a price on the emissions, we can’t solve the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go for a minute to a quote of Paul Krugman. Paul Krugman is the New York Times op-ed columnist. You had written a very interesting piece in the New York Times called “Cap and Fade.” The Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said about your December 7th op-ed—his response was called “Unhelpful Hansen.” And he said, “James Hansen is a great climate scientist. He was the first to warn about the climate crisis; I take what he says about coal, in particular, very seriously.

“Unfortunately, while I defer to him on all matters climate, today’s op-ed article suggests [that] he really hasn’t made any effort to understand the economics of emissions control. And that’s not a small matter, because he’s now engaged in a misguided crusade against cap and trade, which is—let’s face it—the only form of action against greenhouse gas emissions we have any chance of taking before catastrophe becomes inevitable.”

Your response?

JAMES HANSEN: That’s not right. In fact, I’ve talked with many economists, and the majority of them agree that the cap and trade with offsets is not the way to address the problem. You have to put an honest price on carbon, which is going to have to gradually rise over time.

But what you need to do—and many people call that a tax, but in fact the way that it should be done is to give all of the money that’s collected in a fee, that should be across the board on oil, gas and coal, collect that money at the mine or at the port of entry from the fossil fuel companies, and then distribute that to the public on a per capita basis to legal residents of the country. Then the person that does—that has less than average carbon emissions would actually make money from the process, and it would stimulate the economy. It would give the public the funds that they need in order to invest in low-carbon technologies. The next time they buy a vehicle, they should get a low-emission one. They should insulate their homes. Such actions. And those people who do that will come out ahead. That’s—the economists agree that that’s the way you should address the problem, with a price on carbon. Otherwise, the emissions will just continue to go up.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain exactly what’s meant by “cap and trade.”

JAMES HANSEN: Cap and trade, they attempt to put a cap on different sources of carbon dioxide emissions. They say there’s a limit on how much a given industry in a country can emit. But the problem is that the emissions just go someplace else. That’s what happened after Kyoto, and that’s what would happen again, if—as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, they will be burned someplace. You know, the Europeans thought they actually reduced their emissions after Kyoto, but what happened was the products that had been made in their countries began to be made in other countries, which were burning the cheapest form of fossil fuel, so the total emissions actually increased.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me play an excerpt of what the Australian scientist Tim Flannery says. He was speaking on Democracy Now! earlier this year in defense of cap and trade.

TIM FLANNERY: Look, cap and trade, by itself, is not enough, but it is essential in terms of these international negotiations. And one way of showing that is to look at the alternatives. Just say the US went with a carbon tax. That would leave the President in a position where he’d be going to Copenhagen and saying, “Look, we’ve got a carbon tax, but we’ve got no idea really what it’s going to do in terms of our emissions profile.” So, countries would just say, “Well, what are you actually pledging to? What are you—how are you going to deal with your emissions?” You know, the only method, really, to allow countries to see transparently what other countries intend to do and then share the burden equally is through a cap-and-trade system. So it’s not enough to deal with emissions overall, but it is an essential prerequisite for any global deal on climate change.

AMY GOODMAN: The Australian scientist Tim Flannery. Dr. Hansen?

JAMES HANSEN: Well, I guess I would turn Krugman’s comment around and say Tim is a great biologist, but he hasn’t looked at the data on emissions and the effect of a cap with offsets. In fact, it does not decrease emissions. And that’s one reason, in my book, I say that I’m going to update the graphs every month and every year, just showing what’s really happening, because, in fact, you have to actually decrease the emissions.

And the only way that will happen is if the price of the fossil fuels is gradually rising so that the alternatives—energy efficiency, renewable energies, nuclear power, the things that can compete with fossil fuels—begin to be cost-competitive. That’s the only way it will work.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s go back for a minute and talk about what we are actually facing. I mean, it’s amazing to come back from Copenhagen after two weeks there, where the entire discussion was about global warming, back to the US media, where there is almost no mention. It’s more the politics of what did it mean for President Obama to swoop in, did he save the talks, did he collapse the talks, whatever. But actually, what the stakes are. You begin your book, Storms of My Grandchildren, by talking about a tipping point. What do you mean by that, Dr. Hansen?

JAMES HANSEN: Well, there are tipping points in the climate system, where we can push the system beyond a point where the dynamics begins to take over. For example, in the case of an ice sheet, once it begins to disintegrate and slide into the ocean, you’ve passed the point where you can stop it. So that’s what we have to avoid.

Another tipping point is in the survival of species. As we begin to put pressure on species and move the climate zone so that some of the species can’t survive because they can only live within certain climate parameters, because species depend upon each other, you can drive an ecosystem such that when some species go extinct, then the entire ecosystem will collapse. So you don’t want to push the system that far.

And these tipping points are not hypothetical. We know from the earth’s history that these have happened in the past, especially when we’ve had large global warmings. We’ve driven more than half the species on the planet to extinction. And then, over hundreds of thousands and millions of years, new species come into being. But for any time scale that we can imagine, we would be leaving a much more desolate planet for our children and grandchildren and future generations. So we don’t want to pass those tipping points.

AMY GOODMAN: And how do you know that we are headed in that direction?

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: What, in your work, has told to this?

JAMES HANSEN: Well, in the case, say, of the ice sheets and sea level, we see. We began in 2002 to get this spectacular data from the gravity satellite, which measures the gravitational field of the earth with such a high precision that you can get the mass of the Greenland ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheets. And what we see is that in 2002 to 2005, we were losing mass from Greenland at a rate of about 150 cubic kilometers per year. Well, now that’s doubled to about 300 cubic kilometers per year. And likewise, the mass loss from Antarctica has also doubled over that time period.

So we can see that we’re moving toward a tipping point where those ice sheets will begin to disintegrate more rapidly, and sea level will go up. And that’s one of the bases, and others, for saying that a safe level of carbon dioxide is actually less than what we have now. It’s—

AMY GOODMAN: Which is?

JAMES HANSEN: What we have now is 387 parts per million. But we’re going to have to bring that down to 350 parts per million or less. And that’s still possible, provided we phase out coal emissions over the next few decades. That’s possible. We would also have to prohibit unconventional fossil fuels like tar sands and oil shale.

But if you look at what governments are doing, the reason that you know that the kind of accords they’re talking about are not going to work is because, look at what they’re actually doing. The United States had just agreed to have a pipeline from the tar sands in Canada to the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: In Alberta.

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, so they’re planning on actually burning those tar sands, which we can’t do.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain how that works. What are the tar sands? I mean, this was a major issue in Copenhagen, and we played a number of pieces, especially indigenous people, for example, marching on the Canadian embassy—

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —to try to stop the drilling.

JAMES HANSEN: They’re among the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet. There’s oil mixed in the ground with the sand. You have to cook that material to get oil to drip out of it. That takes a lot of energy to cook it. And then you end up with oil, which also has carbon. Then you burn the oil, and you get more carbon. So it’s much more carbon-intensive than oil itself.

AMY GOODMAN: We get more oil from Canada than anywhere else in the world, is that right?

JAMES HANSEN: I’m not sure about that, but the plan is, in the long run. There’s much more there in tar sands than even in Saudi Arabia.

So the point is, we’re going to have to move to the energy system beyond fossil fuels. We need to drive the economic system so that we move to a clean energy future. And there are many other advantages in doing that: cleaning up the atmosphere, cleaning up the ocean. You get—the mercury and arsenic and all these pollutants are coming from fossil fuels. So we need to get off this fossil fuel addiction. And the way you do that is to put a gradually rising price on the carbon emissions.

AMY GOODMAN: How many times have you been arrested protesting now the issue of coal and mountaintop removal?

JAMES HANSEN: A couple of times in West Virginia, with regard to the mountaintop removal, and in Boston, where we were sleeping out on the Boston Commons. But, yeah, trying to draw—

AMY GOODMAN: So, how did you go from being the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies to getting arrested for these protests?

JAMES HANSEN: Well, these protests are what we call civil resistance, in the same way that Gandhi did. We’re trying to draw attention to the injustice, because this is really analogous. This is a moral issue, analogous to that faced by Lincoln with slavery or by Churchill with Nazism, because what we have here is a tremendous case of intergenerational injustice, because we are causing the problem, but our children and grandchildren are going to suffer the consequences.

And our parents didn’t know that they were causing a problem for future generations, but we do. The science has become very clear. And we’re going to have to move to a clean energy future. And we could do that. And there would be many other advantages of doing it. Why don’t we do it? Because of the special interests and because of the role of money in Washington.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you don’t just protest outside of, you know, these companies that do mountaintop removal; you were protesting outside the Natural Resources Defense Council, the NRDC.

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah. They and some other environmental organizations have become too much of the Washington scene, and they’re trying to work on the terms that Washington now works on, in which the lobbyists are driving the legislation. We have to get the legislation designed in the public’s interest, not in the interests of the people who have the money to influence the process.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back. Our guest today is James Hansen. Storms of My [Grandchildren]: The Truth [about] the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity is his first book. He’s the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, teaches at Columbia University. He’s been arrested protesting coal mining and didn’t go to Copenhagen, because he wanted those talks to collapse, felt they wouldn’t save the planet. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.
 [break]  

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Jim Hansen. Storms of My Grandchildren is his new book, The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.

I wanted to play for you, Dr. Hansen, the comment of the Prime Minister of Nepal. Days before the climate talks began in Copenhagen, cabinet ministers from Nepal held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest, at the base, to send a message on the impact of global warming on the Himalayas. I spoke to the Nepalese Prime Minister in Copenhagen.

PRIME MINISTER MADHAV KUMAR NEPAL: Global warming has its impact on the top of the mountain. And the snows are melting. Glaciers, many of the glaciers, Himalaya glaciers, has evaporated, has disappeared. Many glacial lakes are emerging, and many of the glacial lakes are the [inaudible]. So we have seen many landslides there and no regular land or rainfall there. Droughts and all these problems relating to the health of the people has been seen. And we have seen power plants that is damaging many of the villages. The natural calamities has been seen. And the impact on the mountainous region is much more in the downstream, where 1.3 billion of the population live in India, in Bangladesh. So the problem of Nepal is not only the problem of Nepal’s people, rather the problem of at least 1.3 billion of population.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the Nepali Prime Minister Nepal. That is his name. Your response to that, Dr. Jim Hansen?

JAMES HANSEN: Well, yeah, we see the climate changes. It’s at the top of the mountains. The glaciers all around the world are melting. And those glaciers are actually very important, because they provide fresh water for the major rivers of the world. During the dry season, the rivers, such as the Brahmaputra and the Ganges Rivers, more than half the water in the river is from melting glaciers. So once those glaciers are gone, it’s a real problem.

But the problems are also occurring at the other end of the rivers. The coastline of Bangladesh, for example, is going to be moving inward, and you’re going to have hundreds of millions of people who will be refugees. So it’s especially these poor nations around the world that will suffer from climate change.

AMY GOODMAN: Last week I also caught up with the President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed. Now, this is a low-lying island, the Maldives, at the frontline of climate change. And I asked him what a three degree Celsius rise in temperature, because the IFCCC, the climate change conference—apparently there was this document that we exposed on Democracy Now! with the French news organization Mediapart, saying that their plans, what they were putting forward, wouldn’t actually increase the temperature by two degrees Celsius, but actually by three degrees. And I asked the Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed to describe what that would mean for his country.

PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: That would mean that we won’t be around. That would mean the death of us. And that’s really not acceptable for us. We cannot survive with that kind of temperature rise. 

AMY GOODMAN: For people who don’t understand climate change, which is probably most people in the United States, why wouldn’t you be around? What would happen?  

PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: Sea levels would rise. We are just 1.5 meters above the water. And if we have sea levels rising to seventy, eighty centimeters, that’s going to eat up most of our country. So we won’t be around.  

AMY GOODMAN: Are you making preparations for a mass population removal to dry land?  

PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: Well, you know, we’ve been there in the middle of the Indian Ocean for the last 10,000 years, and we have a written history that goes back 2,000 years. I can move, but where would all the butterflies go, all the sounds go, all the culture go, all the color go? I don’t think it really is a feasible option to move. It’s going to be almost impossible for us to convince our people to move.

AMY GOODMAN: That is the Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed.

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, yeah. That’s exactly the problem. And that’s what was happening in Copenhagen. The wealthy countries are trying to basically buy off these countries that will, in effect, disappear. It doesn’t make sense. I mean, and the danger is that these countries will see this money—that’s why the United States offered to promote $100 billion per year, which is imaginary money, because I don’t think that’s going to happen. The United States’ share of that, based on our contribution to the carbon in the atmosphere, would be 27 percent, $27 billion per year. Do you think that our Congress is going to vote $27 billion per year to give these poor countries? It’s not going to happen. What we—but that’s the danger, that these poor countries will say, “Gee, that’s a lot of money. Maybe we can get that.” What we actually have to do is solve the problem, not pay people off. And that requires reducing the carbon emissions.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about the East Anglia controversy, the University of East Anglia, that the climate deniers, the climate change deniers, are using. Explain what happened, actually, the discussion between the scientists, what is being called Climategate, in emails that hackers got a hold of, and how it’s being used.

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, well, obviously, this discussion between some of the climate scientists revealed frustrations that they have with the contrarians who continually will nitpick about “Is the station data good?” or “Is that one not?” And what they should have done is release their full data immediately, because there’s no question about the actual climate change. And by having—by this attempt to not be completely open, they opened themselves up to criticism.

But, in fact, the climate record is not debated, and it’s not debatable. If they give all the data, then they give the opportunity to somebody else to show, “Oh, it’s really not warming.” But, of course, they can’t show that, because the evidence is all over the place that the climate really is changing.

But unfortunately, this episode has been very confusing to the public, so now there are many in the United States, especially, who are skeptical about whether the climate change is real. So it’s been a public relations disaster, but it doesn’t change the science one iota. In fact, the science has become clearer and clearer over the last several years.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about where the United States is versus Europe? I talked to people throughout Europe in Copenhagen. I mean, thousands of people came out. Whether you wanted those talks to collapse or not, the level of networking and of groups all over the world was truly remarkable that took place there largely outside of the Bella Center—

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —but also inside, because in the last few days, civil society was really kept out of those talks. But they said the United States is years behind in just the discourse, because we are at the point of—

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —if you even have a discussion in the US media, it’s about whether global warming exists.

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Whereas in Europe, it’s about—the debates are about, well, what do we do?

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, carbon sequestration? Should there be cap and trade? What are the alternatives? That’s where the debates lie there. Here, we’re way behind.

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, and for a very good reason: because of the effectiveness of the industries that don’t want to see change. They have had an enormous impact on the public’s perception of the issue.

AMY GOODMAN: Where do you see that with scientists, for example? We just did that piece on healthcare, the amount of money they’re pouring in lobbying on healthcare. What is it in—on global warming legislation that didn’t pass the Senate, $300,000 a day from coal, oil, gas?

JAMES HANSEN: Well, yeah, there are more than two-and-a-half thousand energy lobbyists in Washington, so that’s more than four per congressperson. And that’s—unfortunately, the public just doesn’t have that kind of representation. And it’s also a fact that the industry influences the media, so that you always see this presented as if it’s an either—there’s one side and there’s another side, as if they were equal. But, in fact, the science has become crystal clear. And we have the most authoritative scientific body in the world in the National Academy of Sciences. So all the President would need to do if he wants to make this issue clear to the public is ask the Academy to give him a clear report on this subject, and the answer would be very clear.

AMY GOODMAN: The effect of the EPA now announcing that carbon, methane, that they are threats to public health? Can the EPA just start regulating regardless of Congress passing legislation?

JAMES HANSEN: Well, they can. But then, when we have a new election and a different party comes to power, that their ability to do that might be changed. And so, that’s why it’s preferable to have laws written by Congress and signed by the President. But in the absence of that, EPA can get us moving in the right direction. And they are beginning to do that, for example, in vehicle efficiencies.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the level of suppression of science in the United States. You personally experienced it. There was this exposé in the Times where you first were talking to Andrew Revkin and explaining what was happening under the Bush administration, and even before that, the suppression of your work when you testified before Congress to, what, Senator Al Gore at the time.

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah. There are two major problems. One is that the public affairs offices of the science agencies are headed by political appointees, and they tend to try to control the information that goes from the science agencies to the public, if it is a politically sensitive topic. In many topics, maybe 99 percent, there’s no interference. But when it becomes a sensitive issue, as it was with global warming, there is that tendency.

So the solution to that would be to have professionals, career civil servants, head the public affairs offices. Otherwise, they are offices of propaganda. And it still—it doesn’t matter which, whether it’s Democrats or Republicans; as soon as there’s an election, a change of the party in power, they replace the heads of these offices. So they’re still offices of propaganda, in my opinion.

The other thing is, is if a government scientist testifies to Congress, he has to first show his testimony to the White House. Doesn’t make sense. Why should Congress not get the best opinion of the scientists? This is a power which is just taken by the executive branch, and the Congress has not objected to it. Again, it doesn’t make sense, because the scientific—the scientists are paid by the public, so they shouldn’t be under the control of the White House. They should be free to give the best scientific advice they can.

AMY GOODMAN: You had a young man, twenty-four years old, named George Deutsch, put in charge of you as the top scientist over at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies under the Bush administration. It turned out he hadn’t graduated from college, whatever. He was determining who you got to talk to in the media, what information you were putting out? He was—

JAMES HANSEN: Well, that’s the way the story came out in the New York Times. And it sounded as if this low-level person was responsible for the censorship. He was reporting to the highest level at NASA headquarters, the head of the public affairs offices. So, in fact, this was the problem I just described. It’s the fact that the administration in power feels that it gets to control the information that goes to the public. It doesn’t make sense in a democracy. A democracy doesn’t work right if the public cannot be honestly informed.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you feel your work is being suppressed now? You still work with NASA.

JAMES HANSEN: No, I don’t feel that it’s being suppressed now. But the fundamental problem has not been solved, in that the heads of these offices are still political appointees. But I’ve been—ever since this issue became open during the Bush administration, I’ve been allowed to say what I want, because I think the bad publicity of any censorship is not worth it, so they’re not trying to control what I say.

AMY GOODMAN: You were reporting to the top people. It was not only the top people controlling what you had to say. You were meeting with Dick Cheney, the Vice President, you were meeting with Colin Powell, to warn them about global warming. What was their response?

JAMES HANSEN: Well, yeah, I had the opportunity at the beginning of the Bush administration to speak to the energy climate task force, which was headed by Vice President Cheney and which had six cabinet members plus the EPA administrator and the national security adviser on it. But what I learned was—and we, I think, gave them a clear story about the dangers in continuing greenhouse gas emissions, but the decisions on what the policies were made were made a couple of weeks before they listened to the science stories, as I discuss in one of the chapters in my book. So the policies were based on other considerations rather than the scientific information.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, what do you think needs to happen right now?

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, what needs to happen right now—we have this great opportunity this spring, I would say, to have discussions in the House and Senate about what really needs to be done to solve this problem. And it’s not cap and trade with offsets. We can prove that that’s completely ineffectual. What we have to do is put a price on carbon, and the money that’s collected needs to be given to the public, not used for boondoggles, like Congress is taking—plans to take the money from cap and trade that’s collected in selling the permits to pollute and to use that money for things like clean coal or to give the money back to the polluters. That won’t solve the problem. We have to give the money to the public.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see the Obama administration in any way going in this direction?

JAMES HANSEN: I think it’s possible. There were a couple of encouraging things in Copenhagen. For one thing, Al Gore made a clear statement that a carbon price is a better solution than cap and trade. And John Kerry also indicated that he had an open mind on that question. So that’s why I say the discussions in the next few months are very important, because the way the United States goes is going to determine the way the world goes, I think.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us. Dr. James Hansen is our guest. He is author of Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity and one of the world’s leading climatologists.

Link:  http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/22/leading_climate_scientist_james_hansen_on

ScienceInsider: Carbon Tax Proponents in Copenhagen and Washington Steadfast, Lonely

Carbon Tax Proponents in Copenhagen and Washington Steadfast, Lonely

by Eli Kintisch, ScienceInsider, March 12, 2009

COPENHAGEN—The economic outlook may be daunting, and everyone in Copenhagen agrees on the need to cut CO₂ emissions, but just how to stimulate investment in low-carbon technologies is a long-standing and contentious issue. Repeating a position he has long argued passionately, Yale University economist William Nordhaus said yesterday that the current approach, setting a Kyoto treaty–style international goal of cutting a certain amount of emissions by a certain date, would be a mistake. (He is joined in this argument by James Hansen, who lacks Nordhaus’s economic expertise but offers considerable scientific gravitas.)

Yesterday, in a plenary session, Nordhaus repeated his long-standing preference for a carbon tax, which sets a price for carbon emissions, not an emissions goal.

He told scientists that having "an internationally harmonized system of carbon taxes" would be much more efficient, from an economic standpoint, than emissions caps. According to Nordhaus, small countries would not have to worry about achieving certain emissions levels, the system would be much less prone to corruption or cheating, and taxes, "while hated," are a long-standing and "proven" financial instrument.

"They're not something that you need to invent overnight to solve an important problem. … It is unlikely that the Kyoto model, even if it is strengthened [here in Copenhagen in December] as it is currently envisioned, can achieve its climate objectives in an efficient and effective manner. To get the world's climate system and global environment on this untested approach, with such clear structural flaws, is in fact a reckless gamble," Nordhaus says. At the very least, he says, the Kyoto treaty should be modified to allow countries to fulfill their obligations through joining an international carbon tax process.

Nordhaus's strategy has a lot of opponents, many of them strong environmentalists—here is a good argument against the idea. Still, in Washington last week, Representative John Larson (D–CT) introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to set up a carbon tax system. With leadership on Capitol Hill and in the White House committed to a cap-and-trade system, the bill is likely doomed, but that hasn't stopped Larson from advocating the tax approach in The New York Times.

"The American people want us to level with them," Mr. Larson, a moderate Democrat from Connecticut and a member of the House leadership, said in an interview. "We create price certainty without any new bureaucracies or complicated auction schemes."

Link to article: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/