Tag Archives: climate change

Sorry, Kyoto Signatories, Emissions Traders, Carbon Taxers, Homo Oeconomicus Won’t Save the Climate – Part 4

By Michael Hoexter

[Part I] [Part II] [Part III] [Part IV]

8.  Effective Climate Policy:  A Massive Commitment of Public and Private Resources

The long list above of features of an effective climate policy may fail the requirement that some would place on documents such as these that they be short and easily absorbed from a momentary scan of the page.  Perhaps at a future date, I or someone else will produce a shorter summary of what would go into effectively transforming the energy basis of society and maintaining and developing civilization beyond its current state.  However when the scale of the challenge is taken into account as well as the stakes involved, I believe the length of the mere sketch I have produced here is warranted.

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Sorry, Kyoto Signatories, Emissions Traders, Carbon Taxers, Homo Oeconomicus Won’t Save the Climate – Part 3

By Michael Hoexter

[Part I] [Part II] [Part III] [Part IV]

7.  Outline of An Actually-Effective Climate Policy

Actually-effective climate policy, which might be called a comprehensive climate and energy policy, then has the following components:

1)    National Carbon Mitigation Plan:  National carbon mitigation plans (reduce emissions of greenhouse gas emissions to zero or below) commissioned by individual governments that outline the high-level designs of a zero-net-carbon infrastructure for projected 2050 energy and transportation demand in a particular nation.  Such plans should assume no technological breakthroughs but deployment of existing technologies or foreseeable successor generations of these technologies.  For each nation these plans will look quite different depending on existing infrastructure, natural resources, cultural preferences, and geography.  The plan will include targets for carbon mitigation via land use changes and energy conservation.  Such climate plans should include alternative technological and land-use scenarios which would also estimate the carbon emissions required to build those various scenarios.  A scenario with the highest likelihood of success (defined below) would be chosen first with regular check-points built-in for progress as well as preparation for fall-back scenarios in case of bottlenecks closing down paths and new developments opening up new paths.  Such a plan will need to be built around durable social values, ensuring its resilience to both natural and man-made challenges and changes.  In-built into planning would be a “no-regrets” policy, if in the face of well-tested innovations, substantial changes will yield a better social and environmental outcome.  However, implementation of the plan cannot be shelved or delayed on the basis of speculative claims of improved outcomes by pursuing new and untried innovative technologies.

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Sorry, Kyoto Signatories, Emissions Traders, Carbon Taxers, Homo Oeconomicus Won’t Save the Climate – Part 2

By Michael Hoexter

[Part I] [Part II] [Part III] [Part IV]

4.  Existing Climate Policy Is Lacking a “Drive Axle” Between Ethical Impulse and Policy Implementation

The decision in the 1990’s to turn over climate policy to market mechanisms, in particular emissions trading, was framed by supposedly “objective” economic assumptions based as outlined above on the idea that people are essentially, Homo oeconomicus, i.e. act in practice as if they do not consider, among other things, the moral dimension of life, are “utility” maximizers and are essentially divorced from their community of context or the community of all human beings more generally.  The Kyoto Protocol and its various progeny including the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS), the Northeastern US Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and California’s AB 32 cap-and-trade system, all “hand off” implementation of the intention to reduce climate change to a constructed carbon permit market, layered above the real markets for goods and services.

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Sorry, Kyoto Signatories, Emissions Traders, Carbon Taxers, Homo Oeconomicus Won’t Save the Climate – Part 1

By Michael Hoexter

[Part I] [Part II] [Part III] [Part IV]

1. Introduction: Context of Existing Climate Policy

Together, as a world economic system, we are currently on an emissions trajectory to achieve anywhere from 4 to 6 degrees Celsius (7 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit) warming by 2100.  Global average temperature increases within this range mean catastrophe for humankind, with sea level rises of at least 3 meters (10 feet) and a vastly more hostile environment for human life and co-evolved species.  Humanity may be, with these emissions levels either bringing about its own extinction as the effects of the resultant warming set in or, at least, so degrading the conditions of life that very few humans will be able to survive.  We will have to reduce the currently escalating rate of increase of emissions to zero and then over a period of two to three decades reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero in order to have a chance of stabilizing the climate and not significantly endanger the welfare of future generations.

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Degrees of Responsibility for Climate Catastrophe

By Michael Hoexter

The climate crisis is an event with such profound personal and broadly social moral implications that many shy away from discussing the crisis itself let alone its ethical aspects.  Via our society’s use of fossil fuels we are, if our combustion of these fuels remains unchecked and in addition we further destroy the carbon fixing capacity of natural systems, destroying almost all wealth, the likelihood of their being future civilizations, and even the possibility for existence for future generations.  To continue ignoring climate change and effective climate action is definitely an après moi le deluge stance, an expression of callousness and self-absorption unsupportable by moral justification.  Morality and ethics is here not an exotic preoccupation of a select group but a basic reality-check:  does what we are doing make sense and promote the general ends to which these activities are devoted?  How do we assess our own agency and role and those of others, in events that are occurring around us and will with very high likelihood exacerbate in the future?

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President Obama, Are You Going to Detonate the World’s Largest “Carbon Bomb”?

By Michael Hoexter

January 31, 2014

Dear President Obama,

I campaigned for you in the primaries and general election of 2008, write about the economics of climate change, work in the area of energy efficiency and renewable energy, and am a climate activist in Northern California.  I am writing you to appeal to your highest ethical values and best understanding of scientific reality to deny approval to the Keystone XL pipeline project as well as deny approval to retrofits and new construction of other cross-border pipelines, such as the Alberta Clipper line which will enable more economical exploitation of the Albertan tar sands oil deposits.  The Albertan tar sands were described by the climate scientist James Hansen as the largest “carbon bomb” still untapped by the fossil fuel industry, which if exploited mean “game over” for a climate hospitable to human beings and our civilization.

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Politically Fashionable Carbon Gradualism vs. Reality

By Michael Hoexter

The recent re-entry of the Obama Administration into public discussions and advocacy for climate change action has been a mixed blessing for the climate action movement.  On the one hand, President Obama possesses the (U.S.) bully pulpit as President and thus can broadcast messages, which can be heard around the country and the world.  Furthermore he leads the executive branch of the US federal government, where his Administration can enforce existing regulations, negotiate international business and political relationships, and set climate and energy targets for the functioning of the federal government’s internal operations.  Indications that the US President personally is concerned about climate and assigns it a medium or high priority would, one would assume, make more likely real policy and executive actions, not just speeches.  Against the background of relative US government inaction on climate change over the past two and a half decades, the decision to bring the climate issue out of the shadows in the beginning of his last term in office and his June 25th speech would under most circumstances be viewed as a net “win” for climate action and the climate movement, no matter what the exact content of his policy prescriptions.

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Ideology trumps science and blocks regulation

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzina.com)

This column was prompted by a story that ran Friday entitled “Congressman Calls Evolution Lie from ‘Pit of Hell.’”  Yes, unintentional self-parody continues to reign supreme.

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