At last night’s climate change debate (“Will Green Put us In the Red?”) Eric Roston, senior associate at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy at Duke University said that his goal for the evening was to show the audience that the issues of climate change are far more confusing than we thought they were.
First off, the 1400-page Waxman-Markey bill that’s now before Congress, the primary component of which is a “cap-and-trade” program that will (among other things) cap greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050. Second, comprehending why there is rising skepticism of climate change around the world (amongst both liberals and conservatives), despite there being plenty of science proving that the atmosphere is warming due to man-made C02 emissions. Finally, what exactly is geoengineering and why is it getting a lot of attention on both Capitol Hill and The Daily Show?
Though the four panelists agreed that climate change is real and that there’s scientific evidence to prove it, they all had different ideas on how to go about fixing things. (So did moderator Dennis Kneale, anchor of CNBC’s Power Lunch.)
Ralph Cavanagh, senior attorney and co-director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s energy program, reminded the audience repeatedly that there’s evidence that we (and various industries) can actually save money by reducing energy. Cavanagh cited a McKinsey report that shows that we can achieve energy efficiency merely by changing the appliances and building materials we use from here on out. (The report, summarized here, estimates we would save $1.2 trillion as a nation by 2020 if we invested $520 billion in efficiency improvements.)
While this notion of energy reduction saving money did not seem like earth-shattering news to most of us, apparently it was for some on the panel.
Steve Hayward, the F.K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (and host of “An Inconvenient Truth…or Convenient Fiction?”), argued that developing countries such as India and China cannot afford to adopt the clean technologies that the U.S. and other western nations are already starting to use. (There is reason to be concerned about this as China has already overtaken the U.S. in carbon emissions, and India is soon to follow.)
This is no reason not to do what we can to stop climate change here in the U.S., as one member of the audience pointed out.
Ronald Bailey, author and science correspondent at Reason magazine agreed with Cavanagh that the entire fossil fuel infrastructure is going to be replaced in 40 years—“The question is, will it be cost effective or not?” asked Bailey. Bailey was the panelist most skeptical of government intervention and urged trusting the genius of the marketplace. Roston concurred, at least in regards to ethanol, which the government mistakenly espoused even though it doesn’t make environmental sense.
“Drinking it is the best idea!” Roston continued, promising he’d have a few glasses of ethanol as soon as the panel concluded.
Towards the end of the evening, we learned about vaporizing ocean water (to create white clouds that would deflect the sun, reducing global temperatures) and other controversial “geoengineering” projects that are gaining currency in Washington. (Controversial because some people, such as author Steven Levitt, argue that we should turn to geoengineering instead of, not in addition to, reducing man-made CO2 emissions.)
A smirking Hayward mentioned that Jon Stewart had Levitt, one of the authors of SuperFreakonomics, on his show a few weeks ago and seemed to side with his (apparently poorly researched) chapter on “Global Cooling.”
“Have you stepped on a secular religion?” Stewart asks Levitt at one point, referring to the controversy generated by his chapter. (For more on this controversy, see this excellent post by Brian Merchant of Treehugger.)
Cavanagh says there’s something to these technological solutions, such as painting roofs white to deflect the sun (and thereby reducing planetary warming), but he cautioned that we’ve got to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels for other reasons than reversing climate change. “This is also about energy security and public health, not just climate change,” Cavanagh said.
Suzanne Dawson, a public relations executive for energy companies including Duke Energy and PPL, said she was surprised by how much she enjoyed the rowdy debate. “I loved the intimate setting,” said Dawson, referring to the cozy bar on the 3rd floor of the Norwood Club.
Asked what he got out of the evening, entrepreneur Locke Raper said, “The issue is complicated in terms of underlying science, possible outcomes of future scenarios and underlying politics. But we do know enough at this point to be rationally concerned and to invoke the human ‘fight or flight’ response at a collective level, which given the limited options for ‘flight’ means we need to ‘fight’ by systematically and simultaneously incentivising energy conservation (both in consumption/production) and reorienting energy supplies with a goal of reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gasses.”
In the midst, or perhaps just the beginning, of what is being described by members of congress as an “economic hurricane”, a large group of self-described ‘global nomads’ made their way to the shelter of low lighting and good drinks in New York’s Norwood Club on Tuesday night. The purpose of the gathering, organized jointly by JANERA.com and Tablet Hotels, was not to forget our problems but to stare them straight in the face. Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia’s Earth Institute and venerable economist would sit down with Matthew Bishop, the Economist’s New York bureau chief and lead a public discussion about where we are going and what lies ahead.
As guests mingled around the bar, where the economic hurricane had not yet hit drink prices and a large beverage known as Old Pal was going for 28 dollars, the evening’s speakers arrived and immediately began fielding questions. “How long do you think this economic climate will last?” one guest asked Sachs. “What worries you most about what lies ahead?” another leaned in to ask.
“These are all things I hope we’ll get into this evening,” Sachs responded, and then glanced around anxiously. “Where are we?” he suddenly asked. A few patrons looked at each other. Was it possible the great development aid thinker was having a delicate moment? “Uh, New York?” one guest ventured. “Oh, no, I mean this venue,” Sachs continued. “What is this place?”
Relief spread across the faces of his gathered audience. “Oh, this is the Norwood Club,” one guest responded. “It’s a private club in New York.” Sachs nodded his head and glanced toward the bar at the center of the living room in what is a converted townhouse. “I see. Well, this sounded like fun so I thought I’d come try it. I don’t do that many of these engagements.” Then he moved up to the front of the room, a sheaf of documents in his hands, and took his seat alongside Bishop.
Following a quick introduction by Janera Soerel, founder of JANERA.com, the two speakers launched into their opening remarks, seeking to underscore just how large the global economic collapse was and would continue to be. “This is an extraordinarily big moment,” started Bishop. “No one can believe what’s happened. It’s a paradigm shift moment. We’re going to look back on 2008 as the year everything changed.”
Sachs followed Bishop’s head-shaking comments with more specifics. “Huge imbalances in the world economy, coupled with ecological stresses on the planet and our own ongoing effort to not blow ourselves up in all-out war are the largest issues we face on the planet.” Sachs, raising his hands in the air, voiced his support for Obama and his new administration but warned he “could get stuck” and stated his concern that the world’s poor were not sufficiently “on the radar.”
From 2003 to 2008, worldwide stock market values increased by thirty trillion dollars, with a ten trillion dollar increase in the US alone. But this unprecedented market growth has been met in the past six months with unprecedented decline, where thirty trillion dollars have been lost, ten trillion of those in the housing market.
“These facts alone would cause us all to feel a little shitty,” Sachs joked.
While the two speakers differed over the role governments can play in redressing the situation, with Bishop urging a stronger private sector role against Sach’s call for more responsibility and control, at least in the short term, from the government, both seemed to agree that the situation would get a lot worse before it got better.
“Consumption is going to be low and subdued for many years to come,” Bishop surmised, while Sachs pointed out that trillions of dollars in government spending and bailout money could be allocated in poverty alleviation initiatives and programs for social change. “In all the presidential and vice presidential debates, the words ‘poverty’ and ‘poor’ were not used once. The words ‘middle class’ were used,” Sachs said. “This is a shocking sign that our politics has stopped being about real people.” As they sat at the front of the room, beginning to take questions from the audience, both men seemed floored by the scope and scale of what they were discussing.
“I’m not sure I have a deep theory of how things got so awry,” Sachs conceded. Yet, as the night continued, audience members pushed the two for a deeper theory and the focus of discussion bounced from a better way to measure social wellbeing (“we need a more sophisticated measure”) to philanthropy (“Rockefeller was the greatest philanthropist in history, perhaps Bill Gates can match him,”) to what we should do about the automobile industry, (“the move to create hybrid and electric cars is exactly the direction we need to be going in.”)
The consensus that the conditions the world is now facing are “extremely difficult” and will “likely get more, not less, complicated” were not in dispute, but clear and specific steps forward were in short supply.
“I cycled through a range of emotions in listening to this discussion tonight,” commented Michela O’Connor Abrams, publisher of the design and home furnishing magazine Dwell who had come to hear the two speak. “I went from being depressed to angry to hopeful to depressed again.”
As Matthew Bishop chatted with guests eager to compare notes about their own survival strategies, a documentary filmmaker approached the departing Jeffery Sachs. “I’d like to come up to Columbia and meet with you about some ideas and ask you a few more questions,” the filmmaker said. Sachs, still clutching his sheaf of papers, laughed.
“Sure we can talk more,” he said. “I don’t know that I have all the answers, but we can certainly talk about the questions.”
At last night’s climate change debate (“Will Green Put us In the Red?”) Eric Roston, senior associate at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy at Duke University said that his goal for the evening was to show the audience that the issues of climate change are far more confusing than we thought they were.
