Henry Waxman is doing the right things....

Today’s post: Wednesday, 6-3-2009

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.

Cap & Trade laws are one way to do that. They may well be an essential part of making it happen in time.

If the caps are really low and the penalties much more expensive than eliminating the excess CO2 released or paying to help others do so in some way, they will get the job done.

1. But to do that, they have to exist at all and begin soon.

That means that they have to be passed into law sometime. And we need for them to pass in the next few months to have them work in time.

What exercise benefits do you get if you never start exercising?

What health benefits do you get from losing excess fat, if you never give up soft drinks, fast food French fries, and other fattening foods at all & never eat even a bit less in any way whatsoever?

None. Absolutely zero.

2. What happens if you do these things but only do a tiny bit – not enough to really do very much?

That depends.

If you gradually do more and keep track of what results you get and then do even more and keep it up, the benefits can be outstanding and massive – even better than your wildest dreams in fact.

If you simply stop or never do any more than they tiny bit you started with, you’ll likely get no benefits to hardly any.

3. What happens if you stop going to work in order to exercise 8 hours a day and stop eating anything except vitamin pills and water?

You can starve or get admitted to the hospital with exhaustion or get evicted from where you live. Not good outcomes at all.

Your intentions were good but you’ll cause more problems than you intended to solve.

In Henry Waxman’s efforts to pass our first Cap & Trade bill, he made a number of concessions that make it initially weaker than we need it to be to solve the problem of excess CO2 emission; & he specifically allowed some of the companies and industries that release the most CO2 to initially escape it in large part.

So, Bloomberg reported that Waxman was criticized by Greenpeace and other environmental groups who said he conceded too much to such businesses, and they will seek to reverse that in the measure before it goes to the full House for a vote.

Who is correct here?

Is Henry Waxman’s set of concessions the right way to go? Or should the bill be re-written as these environmental groups wish?

It can’t be simpler. If the initial cap and trade bill is as strict as these environmental groups would like, one of two things will happen. It simply won’t pass and will have zero effect; or it will pass and harm our economy in these recessionary times and it will infuriate the companies and communities that have no lead time to adjust to it and it will very likely be revoked or successfully evaded.
That won’t, repeat will NOT, get us where we need to go.

So, the environmental groups are well meaning, but unrealistic people.

They very clearly are wrong.

But that’s not the key issue here. If they knew why Henry Waxman was right, they would be much less worried and active in trying to reverse him. They might even support his efforts!

Here’s why he is totally correct and the environmental groups should support him instead of opposing him.

Once we have a cap & trade system that starts in a way that avoids harming the people and businesses that can prevent that from happening, given what else is going on, we will have a cap and trade system within a few years that is very effective.
Here’s why that is so.

Today, we do not have enough renewable energy built to take over supplying the people and industries electricity to replace coal fired electricity. And in many cases, we don’t yet have the electricity distribution grid to get it from the producers to the people and industries who use it.

We don’t yet have the majority of people driving cars that get over 30 miles a gallon or have many industries produce as much using half the electricity they do now.

But in 2020, we will begin to have these things. At that time, we can make the cap and trade a good deal more restrictive and have more teeth.

Then, about that time, between those cap & trade rules increasing the cost of using coal and oil, and new technologies and economies of scale beginning to make renewable energy cost less, the market itself will begin to favor using renewable sources. And within another 20 years after that, we can make the cap & trade extremely restrictive because we WILL be able to do the job with far less electricity from coal and oil.

But a good bit of that scenario is based on having a cap and trade system at all & having it in place soon.

If the environmental groups succeed in making the cap & trade bill more restrictive now, we may not have one or we may have one that does more harm than good.

So, Henry Waxman is correct. Even more than that, as the Bloomberg article points out, though it did take many stages over several years, Waxman’s efforts to increase the regulation of tobacco have become effective.

I think that given today’s situation, the cap & trade bill as he has it now may well pass. And, once it has done so, it will be made stricter at the times that our economy is able for it be. Further, that will happen more quickly than either the environmental groups or many of the businesses who release CO2 today now imagine it will happen.

The people in the environmental groups should remember this.:

The income tax was initially only a tiny tax on people with truly huge incomes. Now almost everyone pays a much larger percentage of their income than the initial percentage the income tax started with.

That did take a long time to be sure. But not only will the same thing happen if we succeed in passing an initially not very restrictive cap and trade law, for dozens of reasons, the transition will be something like 10 or 20 times faster.

But to recap the key point, we have to have a cap and trade bill, however mild initially, for that to occur.

Three cheers and applause for Henry Waxman!

Will CO2 reduction save or cost money?....

Today’s post: Wednesday, 5-20-2009

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.

But will CO2 reduction save or cost money?

Two emails I get this week suggest opposite answers.:

“Help curb global warming while saving consumers money” is the email from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Help Stop the National Energy Tax” is the email from the Republican Party.

It seems they expect different answers to the question will CO2 reduction save or cost money.

The Union of Concerned Scientists sounds more like they know what they are talking about as they include the results of an extensive analysis.

And, as is typical of the current Republican Party, they simply rely on their readers reacting to “taxes” as a bull reacts to a waving red flag.
My suspicion though is that they are BOTH correct despite the seeming incompetence of the current Republican party.

Here’s the statement from yesterday’s email from the Union of Concerned Scientists.:
"Today, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released the Climate 2030 Blueprint, a peer-reviewed study showing that the United States can dramatically cut global warming pollution while saving households and businesses in every region of the nation billions of dollars in energy costs.

The study shows that combining energy and transportation policies with a strong limit or "cap" on emissions-set at 56 percent below 2005 levels by 2030-would save the average U.S. household $900 on electricity, heating, and transportation costs in 2030. In that same year, businesses would benefit from collective net energy savings of $130 billion." "

I have reason to believe that this analysis is correct or nearly so.

When all the current Republican Party has to offer is in essence, “Taxes are bad. And we believe the current cap & trade efforts are an energy tax.” -- and says virtually nothing else at all, why do I think they might be correct that CO2 reduction might cost money similar to a new tax?

How can they both be correct?

The simple answer is to look at when the statements are correct.

Today, we depend massively on petroleum for transport and burning coal for generating electricity.

So when cap & trade and other CO2 reduction programs in some way costs the companies that provide petroleum and coal or which use them more money, they will charge us more to stay profitable and to survive.

Worse, there is evidence that cap & trade systems may be manipulated in a way that increases their cost to everyone concerned.

That’s why I favor having them phase in slowly and to have their full effect conditional on more renewable energy sources becoming actually available to do the job at what will then be a LOWER cost while making much more massive increases in renewable energy occur much faster then is now expected.

However, if we do build the renewable energy sources well and quickly and get to the point where we have cap & trade AND various kinds of carbon taxes, our real energy costs will be dramatically lower than they would have been had we not acted.

If we fail to act, we will have $8 to $10 a gallon costs for gasoline and diesel fuel due to global economic and population growth. And paying for the costs of pollution, armed forces to ensure oil supply, and the costs of global warming will all be dramatically more. So the taxes to pay for those will also be much more.

So my emphasis and that also I believe the country should emphasize is to dramatically speed up bringing much more renewable energy online, while postponing somewhat the full effect of cap & trade and carbon taxes, etc.

A second way to cut the initial cost of switching to an economy NOT based on fossil fuels is to work out ways to run our existing economy with less energy.

The recent sharp increase in the mileage required for new cars is clearly an extremely desirable and large scale step in that direction.

This may cause buyers to pay up to $1300 more for a new car but will return something like double that for sure in net savings if gasoline prices stay as low as they are now and much, much more than that if gasoline prices go up as I think they will.

President Obama also is quoted as saying this.:

"Consumers pay less for fuel, which means less money going overseas and more money to save or spend here at home. The economy as a whole runs more efficiently by using less oil and producing less pollution," he said. "And companies like those here today have new incentives to create the technologies and the jobs that will provide smarter ways to power our vehicles."

The president also said it will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of the vehicles sold in the next five years.

He said, the reduction of oil burned in that five years in the United States will equal all of a whole year’s U.S. imports from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Libya and Nigeria combined.

And, he pointed out that is a truly huge sum of money that will no longer leave the United States. That will improve our economy as well since those dollars will be available to fuel our economy when they would not have been available here otherwise.
This action also will increase our national security in ways that likely will save us money as well.

So, even though there will be some up front costs and cap & trade may cost far too much at first, if we focus mostly on these kinds of conservation steps, adding new technology that saves energy, and building huge amounts of renewable energy & the network to transport it to where it will be used, our costs soon WILL be far less than they would have been and our economy will be dramatically stronger.

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.