Getting to CO2 reduction safely....

Today’s post: Wednesday, 5-13-2009

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

It’s clear that if we want our economy to use less fossil fuel and release less CO2 we must both increase energy sources quickly that do not use fossil fuels and, best of all, that release no CO2, we must both lower the cost of building renewable energy sources and getting that energy to the people and businesses that use it AND increase the cost of using fossil fuels.

So, it does make sense to begin to charge fossil fuels some fees and costs that their use actually causes instead of allowing them to pretend that those costs don’t exist including the environmental damages caused by their extraction and use. It makes sense to begin to tax fossil fuels beyond that. And, it makes sense to discontinue tax breaks that enable fossil fuels to cost less so using fossil fuels will cost more and to increase tax breaks and other incentives for building and using renewable energy so that soon using fossil fuels will cost MORE than using renewable energy.

Once getting renewable energy and using it begins to cost LESS to the user than using fossil fuels, the market will begin switching us over to renewable sources much more quickly.

However, there are two extremely large problems now with those programs that make using fossil fuels cost more:

1. Since the overwhelming majority of our economy still runs on fossil fuels, if we make them cost a lot more before the renewable energy replacements are beginning to come online, we will slow our economy and make job growth much harder.

2. Since the overwhelming majority of our economy still runs on fossil fuels, the companies that provide them and use them and the localities where those companies are located and provide jobs, have a lot of lobbying money and political clout.
So the safest and most doable transition is to make increasing renewable energy the first priority and to make the increases on fossil fuel costs gradual and to some extent contingent on having the renewable energy successfully in place before some of the increases on fossil fuel costs begin to be added.

We cannot afford to allow fossil fuels to escape these added costs and have a prayer of stopping global warming; but we will actually replace fossil fuels faster, more certainly, more safely, & with more support from people and businesses if we can set up the increases in the way I’ve just described.

It won’t be easy to do at first. But increasing renewable energy with the kind of commitment the United States used in World War II is the key to making it work.

We need for progressive states to do more than the federal government mandates while moving decisions on building new power lines more into the federal government’s control so that non-progressive states do not prevent our effective build up of renewable energy. States and local governments should be able to influence the building of new power lines to minimize any harm that building them might do. But it is also clear that, “just saying no” can no longer be acceptable.

We must remember & not forget that preserving our ability to grow food and minimizing the weather and climate change driven disasters such as fires and coastal flooding depend on using less CO2 -- and to do that safely, we MUST have the transport system to get renewable energy from where it is best generated to where it is most needed.