The return of environmental tariffs.

What started an interesting idea has reared it’s head: a provision to establish tariffs on certain energy-intensive goods from countries that have not accepted emissions limits has found its way into the omnibus energy bill that Obama has to sign. Previously, I argued that if there were some way to differentiate the protectionist signal from the environmental one, the idea might be a useful way to gain some desperately needed leverage on these countries. If the tariffs were established by an international organization or enshrined in an environmental treaty, it would essentially do globally what countries are attempting to do domestically: raise the cost of socially-detrimental goods to get these industries and countries to internalize the full costs of their action. The President understands this, saying: “We have to be careful about sending any protectionist signals.” (These are tough words from a guy who helped kindle a fire of protectionist sentiment in the public and congressional candidates that helped him gain his office, but the point stands.)

I still think I was right in the first place: if we could differentiate the signals, I think it could be a useful lever to push on. So why not do the following?

• Remove the provision from the Senate version of the omnibus energy bill and kill it in the reconciliation committee,
• Initiate a discussion under the auspices of something like the United Nations Environment Programme, including the EU and other industrialized countries that will
• tighten cap-and-trade restrictions or other regulations on a select few of the most energy-intensive industries and
• impose tariffs on goods from these industries from countries that have proven resistant to adopting emissions caps.
• Set up a coordinating body to regulate and adjust tariffs levels.

The provision cannot enter into the upcoming Copenhagen environment summit, which needs a consensus agreement. But this scheme would do two other beneficial things: first, it would serve as a point of integration for the European and American cap-and-trade markets (which diplomats have been looking for anyway), and; second, it would put pressure on recalcitrant countries to behave better at Copenhagen.

Filed under: Economics, Energy, sustainability , trade

Just that one little satellite.

How often do you know about and hope for a satellite before it’s going to be launched? If you’re not a NASA mission controller or a niche scientist, not that often.

The OCO, NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite failed to separate from its launch vehicle this morning and will not become operational. The satellite was carrying complex and revolutionary sensors to track global patterns of Carbon dioxide emission and absorption, which would have given us a vastly greater understanding of the effects of weather patterns and the ability of carbon sinks like forests and oceans to absorb carbon dioxide. The results would have been invaluable to all of mankind. 

The one goddamn satellite I wanted. The last line of the article is particularly brutal.

Update: Here’s a longer article.

Filed under: Energy, Space

Rahm’s Carbon Footprint

I can’t imagine what it must be like to uproot your family and move to the Washington area. Chances are the house is smaller, more expensive. Your kids, if you have them, will definitely be affected by the move. And if you’re a congressperson, you need to maintain a residence in your home state. So I won’t pretend that it’s easy by any means to relocate semi-permanently to the District because, say, you just accepted a post as White House chief of staff.

Still, you have to wonder whether Rahm Emmanuel has thought about the environmental impact of flying home to Chicago every weekend. As Chief of Staff, he probably won’t have that luxury. But what about Montana’s Denny Rehberg:

Representative Denny Rehberg, Republican of Montana, brought his wife and three children to Washington when he took office in 2001. But he found that the Congressional schedule was keeping him away from home most nights and his children were losing touch with their roots on a ranch that has been in the family for more than a century.

So they moved back to Montana, and he commutes nearly every weekend. When in Washington, he sleeps on a couch in his House office, an aide said.

Joe Biden’s daily Amtrak trip from DC to Delaware probably produces a relatively minor amount of carbon. Especially if the train is full. But weekly flights across the country probably produce several hundred tons a year. I don’t know anything about Denny Rehberg, but my guess is his carbon footprint isn’t a top priority right now. But with the scores of staffers gearing up for an Obama administration, someone should start paying attention to working out more sustainable ways of seeing one’s family that don’t involve weekly flights across state lines.

—Brian

Filed under: Domestic, Energy , 44, climate change

The simple solutions to impossible problems.

The Economist, in a quick profile of Giant bikes’ record year, runs the exhilarating attached graphlet showing bicycle adoption; it should remind us that the sheer breadth of the problems we face should not obscure the fact that many of them share common—and sometimes very simple—solutions:

“Suddenly a bicycle seems like the remedy for many modern ills, from petrol prices to pollution and obesity.”

Path dependency, of course, is a constant concern: we are bound by our previous lack of foresight and failure to plan for a future world. In this case, think of how we designed our cities, and how phenomenally constrictive this is: in service to an ethic of personal freedom, each citizen buys one or more personal automobiles and then conveys themselves on enormous streets which take up some large percentage of the space within cities and devotes them to the production of noise and burning fossil fuels. Our cities are built this way and it can’t be changed. The choice now becomes whether we choose to reclaim this redundant unnecessary space as communal parks and playgrounds and and gardens and walk a couple of extra blocks to a public transit system.

I mean, come on! The primary benefit of a city is that you can take advantage of economies of scale! If nothing else, a city should rationalize the transportation system such that most people can be moved to most places most efficiently. The day a major American metropolis bans cars in its borders will herald a revolution in how we live our lives.

This, again, is the lesson of the Economist quote: thought of properly, many of the overwhelming problems we face are susceptible to common, simple solutions. Slowing climate change also helps us achieve energy independence, which can help promote human health through increased exercise and a better diet, produced closer to home—all four issues can help improve our national security. A healthy society, in other words, will prevent problems from occurring, and find ways to solve existing ones concurrently.

The concept of the international interest outlined here applies a similar perspective to international security. When we face these types of positive sum solutions, but seem unable to grasp them, the solution must be political leadership. I hope to spend some time very soon explicating the tradition of and the prospects for just this type of national greatness liberalism.

Filed under: Energy, Liberalism , bikes, cities, climate change, food, NGL, TII

Political safety gear.

A slightly tin-foil-hatty article from Common Dreams, but this snip is tantalizing—

 ”I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States,” Carter said on July 15, 1979. “Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 — never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s…” In addition, we needed to immediately begin to develop a long-range strategy to move beyond fossil fuel.

Therefore, Carter said, “I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation’s first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.“

It also says that Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House and Reagan tore them out.

More and more, it feels like discussion of this country’s environmental policy should require the use of tinfoil hats as standard issue.The number of unmarked black helicopters flying over Northern Virginia these days has me thinking seriously about writing in Ron Paul. Who’s with me?

Filed under: Energy , hysteria

More on nonlinearity in democratic debate.

Alex Steffen at the indispensable WorldChanging points out that scientists are starting to sea the Arctic sea foaming because layers of undersea permafrost are melting to release massive pockets of methane into the atmosphere. The event is yet one more harrowing reminder that not all macro systems are linearly patterned: climate change almost certainly follows some sort of compounding exponential function. Thresholds, tipping points, cascades, and path dependencies all frustrate the capacity of our political discourse, which expects the world to move as slowly and simply as it does. Such arcane or ‘cerebral’ ruminations are lost on elected representatives of both parties. I’ll say again: we need to develop some sort of faculty to account for nonlinear or nonobvious systems in our politics or we’ll face serious consequences.

In the meantime, methane is some twenty times more damaging to the ozone layer than carbon dioxide. We have to remind ourselves that the time for preventive action is quite long past; this is the time for urgent, desperate triage.

—a.j. mount

Filed under: Energy, Practicing Politics , cascades, climate change, nonlinearity, time

Normative cascades and freeing ourselves of oil.

It feels as if the last couple of weeks have produced a cascade of positive movement toward changing the energy portfolio of this country. Naturally, the foundations of this have been laid for decades—in the critical environmental movement, in instability in the Middle East, the Iraq War, this President’s emphasis on parochial economic security, early calls for a gas tax, rising prices, and so on. But seeing it come to a head is exhilarating.

A poll finds that half of Americans don’t think the next President will have the power to lower oil prices, and prefer long-term energy reform. This CNN poll similarly finds half of us think the price of gasoline will be higher a year from now, which rational consumers will use to alter their consumption habits now. Auto companies who for years have promoted socially-damaging demand for personal trucks and sport vehicles are now facing major financial problems, and adjusting future production accordingly. (Ford’s sales fell by thirteen percent in July, and all companies are burning through cash reserves.) Meanwhile, the choice for consumers has been clear: subway ridership in Manhattan was up 6.5% in April relative to a year ago. And non-petroleum and fully emission-free alternatives are coming online shortly, and prices will fall soon thereafter. Meanwhile, this week, Senate negotiators are working out a deal to trade some drilling in the Gulf of Mexico to finally do away with exorbitant tax breaks for petroleum companies, while extending alternative fuel tax credits.(1)

It is impossible not to feel optimism for these transitions. With all that is going wrong for us—economic imbalance, limited security policy, ocean health declining year after year, deforestation, and, to top it all, a myopic political culture incapable of acknowledging and discussing these problems—at least we may get this one thing right. But notice that we are getting this right not as a public policy initiative but as a matter of reacting to circumstance. Those scientists and politicians who anticipated just this eventuality were unable to enact a plan to bring about these processes in controlled conditions and ahead of their schedule—and there are good economic reasons to preempt market adjustments to temper their sometimes drastic effects. Proposals for a gas tax fell flat, Mayor Bloomberg’s New York traffic congestion plan failed, global environmental treaties came up short and failed to pass. We deserve little credit for getting this right, in other words.(2)

The question of the sort of opinion cascades we have seen this summer is similarly disheartening. Social and physical scientists for years have catalogued economic and natural phenomena that change not gradually but on the model of a cascade or a fulcrum. Why has the environmental problem become salient, unavoidable just this summer? The voracious news media coverage has to be at the top of the list. Realizing that high gas prices could be painted as a threat to the families their economic security of common Americans, news directors saturated their stations with belated stories about energy dependence and high prices. Having been polled, reflected, poked, prodded, pandered to by Presidential candidates, the issue became salient; expectations and consumption habits have started to change in notable and perhaps lasting ways.

Consider the counterfactual: had news media taken the opposite tack, the transition could not have been restrained, ultimately, but it likely would exhibit a different character. Cynicism, rather than optimistic, progressive public policy, has contributed too much to this change; it cannot be seen as symptomatic of other progress. This country will learn to raise its eyes to the horizon, or it will crumble.

—a.j.mount

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(1) Obama is going to get reamed from both the right and the left for agreeing to the compromise, but this is exactly the kind of step needed: of course there should be no opposition to socially beneficial progress at all, but because of course there is, we should be grateful that the changing public opinion climate has allowed us to trade temporary regress to oil companies in exchange for lasting change in policy.

(2) A case in point is this New York Times article, also cited above, which has automakers in a race against their declining cash reserves to convert their production lines to produce smaller, and alternative-fuel cars. I don’t know enough about their finances in this case to say whether this is right, but if any of the automakers went under it would be a major blow of confidence to the national economy. If progressive politicians had succeeded in provoking this transition earlier as a matter of public policy, automakers could have anticipated the move specifically and converted their operations under controlled conditions. We could have landed softly rather than clanging to the bottom.

Filed under: Energy, Practicing Politics , cascades, foresight, time, tipping point

An in-depth refutation of EIA energy projections.

Exhibit A: the projections. Exhibit B.

Filed under: Energy

Thinking carefully about energy transitions

I think it’s just right to say that the transition from a is the primary national policy project of our time. (1)Moreover, thought in this field has developed such that if we confront it correctly and with a sense purpose the benefits will be superb, in terms of jobs, national economics, international competitiveness, and so on.

That said, the debate is still distorted by huge misunderstandings. Let’s consider briefly the graphs that accompany two stories today, in the Times and in the Post.

 

There is much to be said about the idea of energy independence and oil security, but in any event, it is too easy to think about it simply. Our supply of oil is not like the foreign holdings of U.S. national debt. The vast majority of U.S. debt is held by democracies and close allies, but since the turn of the millennium (in April, 2000), China has gone from holding just over $70 billion in U.S. debt (or 6.6% of the total) to $502 billion in April 2008 (nearly 20% of the total). Most of this increase has come in the last three years, at a rate of nearly $100 billion / year. Russia’s share has increased dramatically in the past year, to around two per cent.

In sum, our oil supply is fairly well distributed among strong, relatively stable allies. Oil from Venezuela and Nigeria is probably the most capricious sources, but neither contributes more than 5% of the nearly twenty million barrels of crude we burn each day. Worries about American energy security, therefore, is not a matter of one malicious or unstable countries turning off the tap, but the strength of the market in aggregate: the conditions of the decrease will affect the speculative price of oil, but our oil supply would remain relatively secure.

By contrast, international economists have long known that confidence in U.S. foreign debt is a delicate balance, and closely related to the value of the dollar. 

Energy security sells well, but it should not be thought of as a sufficient motivating factor for transitioning to a renewable energy economy—nor, that means, should we take steps to privilege energy security over that transition.

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Second, consider this New York Times article on fuel subsidies abroad, which contains the following insights: 

China’s estimated $40 billion in subsidies this year is up from $22 billion last year, mainly for this reason, although consumption has also risen, with Chinese buying 18 percent more cars in the first half of this year than in the period a year earlier.

In Indonesia, the government spends six times as much on energy subsidies as it does on agricultural investments, even as rice prices have skyrocketed this year…$20 billion. Some economists estimate that fuel use in Indonesia would fall by as much as a fifth if the government were to eliminate subsidies entirely.

And this doesn’t even mention Russian subsidies.

By contrast, the Energy Information Administration estimates that ‘Adjusting for increased ethanol use, U.S. petroleum consumption is projected to fall by 530,000 bbl/d in 2008’ (2.5% in each year) while oil consumption is expected to grow by 900,000 bbl/d this year and 1.4 million the next. Assuming the market pressures against the fuel subsidies are even on the same order of magnitude, the adjustments for these countries would be massive.

That said, this is a prime example of a case in which the United States cannot justifiably lecture the rest of the world on economic policy, given that we still consume one in every four barrels of oil we produce from the earth each day.  

However, consider the enormous effect the environmental movement has had on American societal consciousness. From a militant, critical movement in the seventies, the movement has presented a natural, compelling response to rising oil prices that has altered policy, advertising, and consumption habits the world over. This type of massive redefinition is the type that will have to be exerted in the developing countries to effect a global change in how we fuel our societies.

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(1) The primary civilizational project of our time is the persistence global poverty given enormous global growth. 

(2) See, for a fair summary, Catherine Mann’s 2002 article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

Filed under: Energy , entrepreneurship, hysteria, sustainability