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How much climate damage will the most recent US failure to pass a climate bill do?
As the Senate gave up on trying to pass a climate bill this year, the inevitable question is how much impact will this failure have on the climate?
Obviously it’s a difficult question because we don’t know what will happen in terms of policy in the future. It’s inevitable that at some point we’ll pass a climate bill. But with Republicans to gain Senate seats in November, it likely won’t happen until 2013 at the earliest. There’s also the possibility that Congress will find a way to remove the EPA’s mandate to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, although one such effort already failed, and this also seems unlikely.
Conveniently, the World Resources Institute just completed a study assessing how much the US can reduce emissions just with EPA and state regulations and emissions trading systems which are already in place or will be in the near future. They find that in comparison to a nationwide cap and trade system, EPA and state regulations will fall behind in terms of emissions cuts, but will almost catch up by 2016. But after 2016, they fail to keep up with the cuts in a national cap and trade system. By 2020 the climate bill was to reduce emissions 17%, whereas under EPA and state regulations, national emissions cuts are only 5-12% by 2020.
http://www.wri.org/publication/reducing-ghg-emissions-using-existing-federal-authorities-and-state-action
Then again, if we could begin implementing a national cap and trade system by around 2016, there wouldn’t be much difference compared to implementing the system now.
The other question is how this will impact international emissions cuts. It’s going to be hard for the Obama Administration to negotiate in international climate conferences when we know there won’t be a climate bill in the near future. He can only commit to the cuts that the EPA can make, which are less than a national cap and trade bill will make. So it’s possible that this failure will impact emissions cuts from many other countries as well. China, India, Australia, Canada, etc. may be less likely to cut their emissions without the US leading the way.
So there are a lot of variables involved, but what’s your guess – how much climate damage will the most recent US failure to pass a climate bill do?
Beam, maybe instead of making ignorant and irrelevant comments about ‘history’, you should study a little basic climate science.
The problem does not rest on any specific piece of legislation. The biggest hurdles are institutionalized government and human nature. There is not a single instance in all of human history where a societal-level group has done anything based on what it thought might happen beyond the current or next generation. The first concern of every national leader in the world is their personal political future. And in fairness to them, they are just a reflection of those they rule.
The greatest fear America’s founders had for the long-term future of the nation they had created was that, eventually, an ill-informed and intellectually disinterested public would elect politicians even more selfish and greedy than themselves.
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” – John Adams
Unfortunately, we may be the living nightmare they were afraid of.
8 Responses to “How much climate damage will the most recent US failure to pass a climate bill do?”
Leave a Reply
July 24th, 2010 at 11:52 pm
Cap and trade is a load of bunk. It’s been proven over and over again.
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July 25th, 2010 at 12:23 am
Nothing , nada, zip.
If anything the economy will recover faster without the bogus climate bill.
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July 25th, 2010 at 12:28 am
"So it’s possible that this failure will impact emissions cuts from many other countries as well. China, India, Australia, Canada, etc. may be less likely to cut their emissions without the US leading the way."
US leading the way? Ha! The issue is not that the US hasn’t been leading, but that the US has been dragging so far behind that it has justified others dragging their feet more than they might have otherwise done.
References :
July 25th, 2010 at 12:51 am
The problem does not rest on any specific piece of legislation. The biggest hurdles are institutionalized government and human nature. There is not a single instance in all of human history where a societal-level group has done anything based on what it thought might happen beyond the current or next generation. The first concern of every national leader in the world is their personal political future. And in fairness to them, they are just a reflection of those they rule.
The greatest fear America’s founders had for the long-term future of the nation they had created was that, eventually, an ill-informed and intellectually disinterested public would elect politicians even more selfish and greedy than themselves.
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” – John Adams
Unfortunately, we may be the living nightmare they were afraid of.
References :
July 25th, 2010 at 1:25 am
"The other question is how this will impact international emissions cuts"
There I think you have the real problem. Without concerted action, we have the makings of a tragedy of the commons. Fortunately, most advanced nations have electorates and governments that recognise the problem, and India and China are aware of their own environmental vulnerabilities.
So things may not be as bad as you fear.
References :
July 25th, 2010 at 2:09 am
Again. as usual, you put the question very unfairly, and in a very loaded way. I don’t know if you were hoping to get some sort of cash reward in Cap and Trade became the law, but you have been acting as if that might be the case, and now you put this unfair question.
The key weasle word in your question is "a".
"A" climate bill, a reasonable one, might have done huge amounts of good, and saved us from a lot of global warming, that now, without "a" climate bill is surely our fate, to our great future cost.
Cap and trade was an incredibly byzantine, complex, stupid, and backward approach. It promised 20 years of wrangling, where the EPA would surely resemble the Iraqi National Congress.
No power plant would reduce its emissions, without at least calling for a rulemaking, and then appealing its case to the US Supreme Court, possibly serveral times. Cap an trade was an evil and twisted system of selling indulgences to do what must not be done (put huge amounts of carbon into the air by running very dirty coal fired power plants). It was a law that would have been 2000 pages, and cost a lot of money by the time every single process and procedure was fully implemented over the next 20 years, with not a single powert plant being affected in any way in the meantime.
If you want "a" law, here’s what a proper law would have been like:
(1) The EPA shall investigate and compose a list of the 1000 worst coal burning plants under its jurisdiction in USA.
(2) The EPA shall send letters to the owners of these 1000 worst plants telling them they have 6 months to come into full compliance, or they will be closed down by the EPA, and whatever other forces of government are required to accomplish the close down.
(3) For all plants of the list which do not come into compliance, the EPA shall close them down, using all forces of government required to carry out that purpose.
This one page law, is shorter than a 2000 page law, but it would do 2000 times as much.
This is called doing.
We had the list in 1992.
So there’s been 18 years of non-doing.
If Congress is going to make a law, it should be a law that calls for some actual, authentic, genuine doing.
The law has to make something get done, instead of just setting up a funhouse of talking and paper writing (that’s where you were hoping to make your money right?). It has to cut through all the superfluous process and procedures, which are not in fact required by the "Due Process" clause, and create a fast track for EPA to close down the 1000 dirtiest coal fired plants.
Such a law, would have made a difference to global warming.
But not the law you were pimping for — the Cap and Trade funhouse of paper writing and appeals and rulemakings within a 2000 page bill that is self-nullifying in the hands of any decent member of the American Trial Lawyers Association (where the author of this post is also a member).
It’s good to not pass bad laws.
It’s bad to not pass any law on climate change, and doing something about it.
So the word "a" is the contextually unfair, not to say outrageous, weasle word in your question, given your conduct over the past 12 months.
Why weren’t you out there proposing a better law than cap and trade, like my one page law given above. Is it because you’ve been thinking inside the box as a captive of the academic establishment?
If so, time to grow.
A whole new Congress wil convene in January 2011. Why not have a proposal on their desks which does make sense?
We all want to change the world.
References :
ATLA, and John Lennon told me
July 25th, 2010 at 2:54 am
I’d say it is a glass half-empty. The bad part is that we don’t have any effort in place to control carbon emissions. The good part is that we don’t have the cap-and-trade scheme, with all its shenanigans of under-cap, un-capped, free allowances (government favors) and shenanigans in trading (like bonds backed by mortgages issued to people with no capacity to pay). You know Goldman-Sachs would turn that into another profit center, and it would all come straight out of the public’s pocket (they add no value). The whole part of "trading" means a variable price, which makes it hard to determine how much an investment in reductions will pay. This means the reductions will come slower than they would otherwise.
Maybe we can get a straight carbon tax and dividend on the other side of this. No "market", no favors, and little uncertainty.
Fortunately, we are seeing motion in other areas already. There’s a resurgence in nuclear power (thanks to Bush on that one) and wind keeps growing fairly rapidly even in the years when the PTC is allowed to expire (it rose 28% from 2008 to 2009). If oil prices stay high, people will buy more economical vehicles and drive them less. Those didn’t take a climate bill, and will continue without one.
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July 25th, 2010 at 3:30 am
The question you should be asking is how much damage would have been caused if the legislation would have been passed. You are a poor study of history.
Most times when men have "brilliant" ideas how to "fix" a problem they have caused, they make things worse. Just look at the kudzu that was supposed to stop erosion in the south. Now killing trees and scaling buildings.
"Before 1970, kudzu was planted along Missouri highways to control erosion and some farmers experimented with kudzu for livestock fodder."
http://mdc.mo.gov/landwater-care/plant-management/invasive-plant-management/kudzu
"In the South, it has become destructive to the point of pulling down power poles, breaking power lines, collapsing buildings and killing trees."
http://mdc.mo.gov/landwater-care/plant-management/invasive-plant-management/kudzu
References :
http://www.google.com.hk/images?rlz=1C1GGGE_enCN368US368&q=kudzu%20power%20poles&um=1&hl=zh-CN&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=vi