Why was COP25 such a disaster? How could anyone do better?

First, I owe great thanks to Mike and to Doug for posing the question so clearly and so vividly yesterday morning: what do we need to DO to bridge the communications gap, such that groups like COP25 (the international climate meeting which fell apart so badly this month) can bring forth concrete proposals which REALLY minimize the climate threat to human existence in a way which really works -- minimum cost and delay, minimum avoidable disruption, and deep reduction in risk?

Mike urged us to work towards a "bumper sticker" level of slogan, unlike my talk in Seoul last month ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPccNVHRFIM ). I felt bad that I did not make time to be more forceful about the five key areas for action, which really need the kind of critical professional information which I have gotten access to which COP people don't know about. (See the image below). But Mike is right, that trying to get policy types to count to five is probably too much of a stretch. 

And so, from that discussion, I suppose we need some kind of crusade around the slogan (from the proper elite climate policy debates of 2009): "Instead of what Obama tried to pass, we should have gone for "sectoral legislation." 

And maybe that's what we need to explain somehow. And discuss among ourselves first.

Mike began with the obvious question; "WHY go for sectoral measures? Are the benefits of a different approach worth the risks?"

 

Simplified answer: over 80% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from electricity generation and transportation, just two sectors. (People seeking money for buildings say "commercial sector is 30%". But that's only if you attribute the GHG from the electricity they use to commercial! The data gets tabulated in many ways. If electricity in buildings comes from electric utilities which get the electricity from renewables, using electricity is fine in  buildings. Much of the GHG from industry is for electricity generation and vehicles.)

Instead of asking taxpayers for $1 trillion per year for a carbon tax which has a modest impact on those two sectors, why not pay 10% or less as much to have a bigger impact. WE CAN... if we look are hard and realistic (and global and market oriented) at what can be done in THOSE TWO SECTORS, where I led advanced research at NSF and got to know how things work far more than any of the folks I worked with at EPW knew. (I was the only professional staff working with EPW who had access to the core staffers and analysis in "all three political parties" in 2009, the year of serious climate legislation. That's how I learned how huge the gap is between what we CAN do in those sectors and what they knew.

Examples: on electricity: did you know that Gates has put money in to rescue an 8 cents per kwh proven US technology (solar power towers using advanced Brayton conversion to electricity) which Rick Perry tried to cancel and outlaw, using not market forces  but brute force state power? Did you know that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has authority, under the law and the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution, to provide one-stop approval of interstate and interregional natural gas pipelines BUT NOT ELECTRICITY? (It makes me wonder what Pickens and Dan Kammen of Berkeley are doing lately. Pickens tried to get the law fixed, but right now MARKET FAILURE is the main problem, not the carbon price.) Smiling advocates ask why not just require specific  >50 cents renewable technology everywhere, but OPENING UP MARKETS to allow the low cost solution is what we really need -- We who have to pay, and we who want all the GHG emissions to go. It makes me wonder what Gates' own groups are into... possible allies? 

In short, the cost of renewable electricity varies by a good solid documented factor of ten, and folks who try to get the public to pay ten times what they should have to are enemies of saving the human species from climate extinction, not allies. Folks who overstate the role of rooftop solar in cloudy regions may be unwitting enemies, but they HURT a lot. Confusing folks like COP25 are a big part of that.

As for highway vehicles... I actually WROTE the SBIR research topic for the Partnership for a Next Generation Vehicle (PNGV), and ran it for many years until OGC decided I was becoming too close to Eaton, a company which makes trucks. (No, I broke no rules; I just kept them informed, until they said the line was crossed.) I still remember the EPW hearing where Senator Lamar Alexander (one of the brightest, most honest Republicans) noted how Obama's climate proposal would do almost nothing to reduce GHG from  cars and trucks, or petroleum in general. (Curious how Reid and Waxman used a quiet stakeholder committee with heavy oil industry representation which came up with a climate plan which wouldn't reduce gasoline much. Yes, I met them.) If you doubt me... DOE/EIA and EPA did a joint prediction of what Obama's bill would actually do, and there was petroleum, still big in the year 2100, despite a carbon price of more than $200!!

Specter wanted to introduce a much shorter bill, less than 20 pages, focused just on transportation (a "sectoral bill"), based on an upgrade of a bill introduced by INHOFE, aimed at greater US NATIONAL SECURITY for car and truck fuel, which would have slashed GHG from highway vehicles very deeply while actually saving money for the US consumer overall. I posted that at www.werbos.com/oil.htm. Reid would not let us introduce it because "We have to pass Obama's law first. it's a matter of sequencing." No carbon tax needed!

At the end of the day, I WOULD still view a carbon tax of $20-40 per ton of CO2 as reasonable, as part of the THIRD point below, ONLY because it allows for some incentive for low-cost high-value actions in areas like agriculture and recycling flue gas. Hu of China offered a joint US-China simple carbon tax of $20/ton, eliminating the need for kludgey border adjustment rules, in 2009, but Obama listened to advisors who said this would  

violate Reid's game plan. Maybe Schumer should learn more of what really happened. Would $20-40 rebates be enough for new measured carbon sequestration in those sectors? We don't know; there are times when markets should decide!! But we can do enough in electricity and transportation already to have deep impacts.

By the way, NSF was on course to give even better options, but Lamar Smith killed all that. Long story for another day, like what happened to our access to space (relevant to points four and five, and to US security vis-a-vis North Korea, a subject I have discussed with top Koreans, albeit not by email).

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So: where from here??

For now, Mike is the only real leader in our group on this. but of course, I am eager to help in any way I can. I never forget that this is our lives at stake.