Deniers’ delay game

Anne B. Butterfield, April 16, 2010 (NewEnergyNews)

Those who deny that climate change is real and human caused have a position that is irrational and insubstantial. They have no robust theory, peer-reviewed or otherwise, that comes close to explaining why the planet is warming, even as the last decade has proven to be the warmest on record. Labeling climate science as “junk science” one dear friend and denier told me he had no interest in learning the simple chemistry of ocean acidification -- as if he had authority on the former while being unwilling to grasp the latter.

We need to keep these odd notes in perspective. Republican pollster Frank Luntz recently surveyed 1000 Americans and found that 57 percent say it doesn’t matter if there is or isn’t climate change, it is still in America’s best interest to develop new sources of energy that are clean, reliable, efficient and safe.

With that baseline view felt in the nation, we can guess that deniers are spinning “debate” and claims of a climate bill “wrecking the economy” to avoid bringing the bitter end to America’s founding conviction: maximal consumption as a birthright (particularly where fossil fuels are concerned).

We don’t particularly need more perfectly presented scientific evidence, no matter how flamboyantly deniers denounce some errors in scientists’ conduct and proofreading. What we need is to meet Americans where they like and frame this around national security, jobs and good health.

Colorado is the evidence of these principles: House Bill 1365 just passed 10 to 1 in a House committee with strong bipartisan backing. The lure for the bill, which proposes to rehab or retire 900 megawatts of coal capacity along the Front Range, is to clean up Denver’s brown cloud ahead of the EPA’s plan to do it for us. But there is little doubt the Governor’s office, which negotiated the bill for a year, was pressured by voters clamoring against Comanche 3’s 750 megawatts of new coal capacity.


Recently, also, a new standard for 30 percent renewable energy by 2020 was also passed.

Wonderful! But even with this regional progress, we need to screw up our courage and pass a federal climate and energy bill because there is no going back to plentiful coal and oil and virginal coral in every tropical cove. So let’s review a few studies that show that the climate protection is won’t “wreck the economy”.

According to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, a recent McKinsey report outlines the potential to reduce consumer demand of energy by about 23 percent by 2020 and reduce emissions by 1.1 gigatons each year — at a net savings of $680 billion. (The potential savings were calculated assuming a 7% discount rate, no price on carbon and using only “net present value positive” investments. A full report can be downloaded from McKinsey.com.)

Likewise, the National Academies found in 2009 that accelerated deployment of cost-effective technologies in buildings could reduce energy use by 25-30 percent in 2030.

And we know that making buildings more efficient is work that cannot be shipped overseas.

Nonetheless, on President Obama’s proposed climate bill, members of the GOP have been claiming a $3,100 per household cost increase, a figure that has been openly refuted as misleading by researchers at MIT whose work the conservatives claim as their source. The MIT study puts the cost around $800 per year. Even the pro-Republican Heritage Foundation figured the average family would see its energy bill increase by $1,500 a year under Obama’s plan, but Factcheck.org, says these figures don’t account for energy rebates as proposed. If the government did use revenue from cap and trade to rebate households, a CBO expert said, "lower-income households could be better off."

On the Waxman-Markey bill passed in the House last summer, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates the average cost per household at $98 to $140 per year, the CBO cites $90 in the short run and an average of $455 over 40 years, and the EIA puts the cost hike between 3 percent and 15 percent in 2020.

These numbers are not likely to “wreck’ the economy when we know that peak coal, peak oil and $120 billion per year in health costs related to burning fossil fuels are already wrecking the economy, with more acute attacks to come. The oil spike of 2008 has been claimed by Hunter Lovins as being the trigger of our economic collapse.

At a time of great risk, such as we now face, the riskiest choice of all is to make no move at all, and don’t let the deniers cause anymore distraction or delay.