Why Global Warming Gets It Wrong

The problem with that approach is that global warming is such a huge problem that we can't solve it on an individual basis.  It's great to reduce your own energy consumption, but we need to do so on a national and global scale.

In order to avoid catastrophic climate change, most scientist agree we need a roughly 80% reduction in worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050.  Coincidentally, in order to achieve that goal, it's also agreed that the US needs a 95% reduction to compensate for developing countries.  The only way to achieve these goals is with government legislation (like a carbon cap and trade system), and to get started immediately, because the longer we wait, the more difficult the goal becomes.

So the Senate just discussed the first such proposal (Lieberman-Warner), and the Republicans blocked it.  The reason the Republicans were able to block it is they know they can sell their constituents on economic concerns (i.e. it will make gas prices go up a whopping 50 cents over the next 20 years or something, except don't mention that, just say it will make gas prices go higher) because global warming still isn't a top priority for a lot of people, as you pointed out.

So it's great to try and convince people that we all benefit from clean air and water, but how do you convince them to support something so large as a carbon cap and trade system?  Because we don't need such a big system to keep our air and water clean, but we do need it to prevent catastrophic climate change.  So really the only solution is to educate people about why such legislation is necessary.  The good news is that as your poll points out, two-thirds of us are at least fairly worried about global warming.   Hopefully when the Democrats take more control of government next year, they'll reflect that.

I think that no matter how much you try to educate people about the threat of global warming people are not going to adopt green technology unless it is personally advantageous to the individual (ie it saves them money, and it is easy). Global warming is too nebulous a threat (you can't see it, 2007 was colder than previous years, etc.) to make people change they way they live.

Currently oil prices are very high, this is good because it fuels innovation and research into alternative sources of energy. Had gas cost $4/gallon during the Clinton Administration we'd probably already have cheap renewable energy.

I personally don't care about global warming or the debate very much; but I love green technology, especially when it saves me money. My liberal friend told me that I'm the greenest person he knows and I don't even believe in human caused global warming. That should say something...

The other way to make people adopt green technologies is to make it advantageous for them - i.e. make the finiancial cost of fossil fuels reflect their true cost (i.e. with a carbon tax).  Once green alternatives are the cheaper option, I agree that most people will make the switch.

 Totally. Bottom line is that it has to be not just idealistic but also pragmatic...needs to be financially feasible.  Residential solar paneling, for example, is WAY expensive to install.  Thus, it takes many years to offset installation costs by savings in energy.  Large, federally-funded subsidies for these types of technologies must be in place to increase popular demand which will, in turn, ultimately decrease cost (due to production scale effects).  

Interestingly, just last month John McCain raised concern about subsidies for solar power systems, in favor of incentives for nuclear power plants.  Thoughts?

McCain is way too into nuclear power for my taste.  In fact, McCain was against the Lieberman-Warner carbon cap and trade bill for the sole reason that he didn't think it emphasized nuclear power enough.  As I discussed in the nuclear power debate topic, I think it's got a lot of cons associated with it.  I think we need some nuclear power, but we should also be focusing more on renewables  like wind and solar.

To be against solar power subsidies and yet support nuclear power incentives is just backwards to me.  To be fair, it's the solar power subsidy aspect that he doesn't like (McCain seems to support funding for solar power research), but it subsidies that help make the technology affordable for the consumer!

No, I don't like it one bit.

No because it's carbon cap and trade.  As a result of reducing carbon emissions, other air emissions will also be reduced, but the cap specifically targets CO2.  For example, you could use carbon capture and storage technology to capture just CO2 and ignore other emissions from a coal power plant, and still be in compliance with the cap and trade system.

I certainly agree that it's important to also discuss local environmental issues, but I don't think that talking about global warming or using it as a battle cry 'gets it wrong'.  How about 'global warming and cleaner air and water'?

Sure.  We agree that global warming shouldn't be the only focus.  However, I do think it has to be the biggest focus because it's such an immense problem.  If some people won't get behind global warming mitigation but will get behind clean air (or funding of alternative energy, or whatever), I've got no problem with that.

It's much easier to focus attention on tangible issues ("Let's get rid of Oil") than abstract, daunting, contested, near intangible ones ("Let's stop Global Warming").

While the strategic goal here is to reduce carbon emissions, the tactical approach is to make clean renewable energy *economically* feasible. The question is what would make cleantech really feasible.

Unfortunately, we have created a monstrous value chain around fossil fuels. The only way to bring about a shift in a relatively short time is to disrupt this chain. To disrupt, we have to take a promising but not-yet-performing technology and improve it until we achieve a 10x advantage over the incumbent technology. I doubt that that any of the existing renewable technologies (Solar, Wind, Hydro, Waves, Ethanol) can achieve a 10x improvement. None of these are new. They are all mature and very near their respective limits in terms of performance.

So we're left with nuclear and biotech-based solutions like algae. Nuclear is a hot button that none wants to touch; we hate it but we need it and we hate the fact that we need it. Algae, on the other hand, do show some promise, despite early setbacks. What's great about biological processes is that they scale well and can be (relatively) easily engineered. You can think of the cell as the hardware and the gene as the software. Just look at what we achieved in computer technology over the course of a couple of decades and you'll see why this approach holds the most promise.

Edited by petera650 - Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:44:28 GMT

I recently read an article (can't recall where) about how if the government took the money they currently spend to subsidize one home's solar installation. They could outright buy (not subsidize the purchase of, but completely buy ie. no cost to the homeowners) 5-6 tankless water heaters for 5-6 homes and reduce energy consumption much more than that of the single solar installation.

I'm not agianst subsidizing solar installations but I wonder sometimes where our priorities are when I read things like that.

Tankless water heaters aren't going to become much  more efficient.  Solar panels are.  By encouraging people to buy solar panels (with subsidies), it increases the demand which allows companies to continue funding R&D and develop more efficient technology.  In fact, there are already a couple of companies producing or developing solar power as cheap as coal.

That's true, but as long as oil prices remain high there will be no shortage of R&D funds for solar. Correct me if I'm wrong but I have a hard time believing that residential solar installations are a huge market share of the solar panel industry and drive demand for the technology.

If we can save more energy now by spending less or the same money shouldn't we be doing that?

I suspect that residential solar is a pretty significant share of the PV market.

I don't see why it has to be either-or.  Subsidize both solar panels and tankless water heaters.

while large, the government pot of money isn't infinite.