Saturday, Iran celebrated their great victory over the “arrogant powers” by opening their first nuclear power plant at Bushehr. The opening coincided with dynamic conversation on Jeff Goldberg’s recent article in The Atlantic painting a picture of military action as a foregone conclusion, and prominent foreign policy leaders such as former UN Ambassador John Bolton fanned the flames by renewing calls for a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Dangerously, the discussion on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program has moved away from the case for bombing Iran to who and when, ignoring the painful lessons learned from depicting military action as a clean and straightforward solution. We are still reeling from the burdensome commitments of Iraq and Afghanistan: a military response by either the United States or Israel will take much more than just bombs and have major potential consequences beyond Iran, realities noticeably absent from much of the conversation.

The most obvious and immediately damaging example is world oil supply. Iran could block the Strait of Hormuz, and therefore an astounding 20% of the world’s oil supply. Its estimated oil prices would shoot from $80-$100 to $400-$500, creating a devastating strain on the world economy and possibly result in increased military action.

Beyond the economic blow, the United States would face a whole new set of challenges with the ensuing shifts in the regional power balance, and with decreased leverage to confront them. Many of the advances in foreign policy goals laid out in Obama’s Cairo speech would be discredited, and while Arab heavyweights such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia might privately condone an attack on a regional threat, the public rebuke would support the goals of Islamic extremists by playing right into their rhetoric of the American aggressor.

Another likely consequence is exacerbated regional instabilities through attacks by proxies: Hizbullah would threaten Lebanon’s fragile state, and Israel would face increased attacks from Hamas and destroy any chance of a Middle East peace deal. Iran could leverage their growing regional authority and connections to terrorist groups, even cause complete breakdown in Iraq and Afghanistan. If a decision to bomb occurs before IAEA inspectors are removed from Iran or before verification that Iran violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States risks condemnation from Turkey, Russia, China, and other regional powers, effecting a broad set of policy issues and their willingness to cooperate on regional priorities beyond Iran. It would be a stinging and debilitating blow to our diplomatic and strategic goals.

Further, since Bushehr, Arak, Natanz, and other known nuclear sites are jointly run by Russia or monitored by the IAEA, the development of weapons-grade uranium would likely occur at a secret site, similar to Qom. An effective military strike would require bombing multiple locations over an extended period of time, including nuclear sites, research facilities, and military installations, resulting in an inevitably high number of Iranian and international civilian casualties. Moreover, the lack of knowledge on the exact nature of the targets could result in extensive civilian and environmental devastation due to nuclear fallout. There is also a possibility bombing could be futile, and Iran would pursue a nuclear weapon with fervor under the guise of legitimatized self-defense.

On a domestic front, the degree to which the election protests took the United States by surprise reveals our limited understanding of Iran’s politics. The country’s rising prominence in the region increases the significance of their domestic situation to the outside world. The protests, while harshly contained, indicated the hard-liners’ hold on the country is not absolute. A time-tested result of outside military intervention in the region is a surge of national unity: if there is a bomb Iran policy would likely drive Iranian’s moderates into the arms of the regime, snuffing out any potential future generation of leaders and reforms.

A nuclear weaponized Iran is a real and pressing threat. But before we resort to a military option, calculating what would happen the next day, the following week, and subsequent years is equally critical to our security priorities. We need to ask questions about the challenges and the capability of meeting them. Attacking Iran’s nuclear ambitions may seem like an easy short-term response for a militarily dominant United States, but the last ten years of American involvement in the Middle East demonstrate the extensive commitments required beyond just a few bombs.

Related posts:

1. Will arming the Gulf solve the Iranian problem?
2. Time to Islamicize the condemnation of Iran
3. Winning Turkey’s Support on Iran

Days before the Senate dispersed for its August recess, Harry Reid announced that a vote would not be held on a “bare minimum” energy-only bill, just weeks after the Senate gave up on comprehensive climate and energy legislation. The inability of the Senate to gain any traction on even the most modest of energy bills in the wake of one of the most devastating environmental disasters in history is a clear indicator that there is still a long road ahead toward a strong U.S. climate change policy. There is no better time to reexamine the debate, and the debate begins with the science.

The science of climate change is sound but complex. Climate change will affect different parts of the planet in very different ways, and it is impossible to precisely quantify the physical impacts on Earth’s surface, let alone the social, political, and economic implications of those physical impacts. But ‘uncertainty’ in climate models – the expected variability in data – is too often mistaken for uncertainty about the science itself, and the well-funded lobbyists wishing to cast doubt on the science have made an almost effortless practice of manipulating the statistics and skewing the facts. Still, much of the public’s misunderstanding about climate change persists because of serious flaws in messaging by the science community to counter the misinformation. In many ways, the purpose of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to bridge this communication gap with the public. But with recent polling suggesting that the U.S. public increasingly perceives climate change as a very low-priority issue, the IPCC – and the science community as a whole – needs to overhaul its communication strategy.

The IPCC’s communication problems have spurred plenty of controversy in the past. Last month, IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri sent an ill-conceived letter to the scientists participating in the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), advising them to “keep a distance from the media.” The letter was widely criticized by scientists for seemingly encouraging a “bunker mentality.” In recent months, questions have also swirled around the validity of conclusions reached in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), particularly concerning the projected timeframe for the melting of Himalayan glaciers. Although a review by The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency found “no errors” that would impact any of the report’s 32 main conclusions, the agency did raise a concern that “the foundation for some of these conclusions could have been made more transparent.” But while the IPCC’s transparency may need improvement, its process does not. The IPCC has always had a very meticulous assessment process. The AR4 Summary for Policymakers was “approved line-by-line by all WMO and UN member governments” in a thorough three-day conference that was open to members of the media. And yet, due largely to its uncoordinated communication strategy, the IPCC has been unable to allay widespread criticism of its process. Even Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, has requested an independent review of the IPCC due for release next week.

David Ropeik, a risk communication consultant, offered the following perspective on the science community’s apparent communication gap in an exchange with Andrew Revkin of The New York Times:

“The passionate debate over why people don’t seem to “get” science is the newest chapter in an old discussion. Are people too stupid? Is our education system failing? Do scientists not “get” people, or communicate poorly? It’s time to move past those rather tired questions, because they are predicated on the assumption that there is an “It” to “Get”… some ideal truth that perfect reason can reach, if only the communication gap were bridged and “the facts” were made clear. That fails to acknowledge, as Drs. Jasanoff and Brulle have noted, that human perception of facts is not just a fact-based process. It is an affective mix of fact and feeling. We JUDGE facts. We INTERPRET facts. We run facts through our values and instincts and life circumstances and a host of other affective lenses that produce our beliefs. The gap isn’t scientists from Mars and people from Venus. It’s the gap between people from the mythical land we’ll call Rationalia ignoring evidence of how the real people of Earth actually behave.”

As journalist Chris Mooney has pointed out, polling shows that political ideology weighs heavier on an individual’s views about climate change than education level. Better educated Republicans are actually less likely to accept climate science than those who are less educated, while the correlation among Democrats is reversed. This appears to support Ropeik’s conclusion that information is not simply evaluated in a fact-based way, but rather that climate science is interpreted, first and foremost, in a “politically driven” way. To engage the public at a more “human” level, the IPCC and the wider climate science community needs to call on social scientists and communication experts to drive its messaging strategy, contributing to what American University School of Communication Professor Matthew Nisbet has called “a cultural shift in how leaders in U.S. science view public engagement.”

For many, climate change is just an abstract concept – a hazy set of possible scenarios that will play out gradually and often subtly in the all-too-distant future. In a sense, climate change will always be abstract, often guided just as much by faith as by tangible evidence because it is impossible to definitively attribute any specific environmental event to rising temperatures (the recent flooding in Pakistan, for example). But it is important to approach the issue in new and creative ways to make the theoretical more practical. Some skeptics will likely remain intransigent regardless of how irrefutable the evidence becomes. But when climate change is presented as a public health issue, as a national security issue, or as a moral issue, the message appeals to a much broader audience that would otherwise be unwilling, for purely political reasons, to accept the scientific consensus. The leap from science to policy will always be difficult because politics inevitably gets in the way. But if communication experts take on the challenge of overcoming the political obstacles with new messaging techniques and perspectives, climate change can eventually rise from a bottom-tier issue in the public’s eyes and real policy solutions can finally begin to take shape.

Related posts:

1. Copenhagen Conference Kicks Off
2. Hazy Reasoning on Black Carbon
3. Bipartisan breakthrough on climate change

British Petroleum has finally figured out how to get under the skin of the American Commander in Chief. President Obama, clearly irritated by BP’s lackluster cleanup efforts, has suggested that the British oil giant place in escrow funds sufficient to compensate those American citizens affected by the spill. (BP has just agreed to put 20 billion into an escrow account.) As a political decision, this is both a necessary and shrewd move on Obama’s part. But the underlying geopolitical realities that this oil spill has brought to the surface cannot be understood unless one thinks a bit more carefully – and creatively – about what the BP debacle really is, and what President Obama’s initial failure to take charge really means.

On the surface, the oil spill in the Gulf is an ecological disaster. On this understanding of what the spill is, the main problem is that gigantic plumes of oil – a precious natural resource – are quickly and relentlessly destroying the environment. As BP’s rogue oil eagerly escapes its underwater prison, our wetlands and diverse wildlife expire ahead-of-schedule and unnecessarily. The theory, then, is one of environmental catastrophe, and the dramatis personae are as vanilla as the theory: Barack Obama, beleaguered American President keen to end the crisis; Tony Hayward, the incompetent CEO of BP who makes for an easy target for the world’s politicians, pundits and public intellectuals; the American public, at once enraged and confused; and the shareholders of BP, hiding in the shadows, hoping that the cost of this crisis will not fall on their backs.

A better theory – more powerful and descriptively accurate – is available. This is no mere ecological disaster, but is, correctly understood, an attack on our political, economic, and cultural infrastructure caused by no single individual or institution but enabled by many. It is now well known that a number of indicators pointed toward the possibility of a spill of this magnitude. And yet BP and the relevant U.S. regulators did nothing.

In retrospect, Obama’s failure to properly reform the Minerals Management Service (MMS) is clearly a colossal error. The MMS, the institution that has for ages allowed the oil industry to self-regulate without meaningful oversight, specifically gave BP the authority to drill in the Gulf in April 2009 without doing a comprehensive environmental review of the potential dangers. The MMS thought it would be sufficient to encourage BP to “exercise caution while drilling due to the indications of shallow gas.” Translation: We know this project could go terribly wrong, but go ahead anyway; Americans simply must be able to enjoy their treasured Escalades.

Yet be careful how you conceptualize the BP debacle. This is not a case where an administration has simply failed to prevent an unforeseeable ecological disaster. Nor is this a case where one actor – Barack Obama or Tony Hayward or anyone else – should be exclusively identified as the critical point of failure. That said, it is true that the Obama Administration failed to properly protect U.S. interests and the American people. However, if we want to move forward, we must view ecological dangers of this order of magnitude as threats to our political, economic and cultural infrastructure. For what does it matter whether a terrorist organization or a multi-national company visits vast harm upon us? In either case our country could be maimed or crippled. Moreover, if we think of an oil spill merely as a regrettable “environmental” problem, we will be too eager to (1) punish a small subset of the guilty parties and (2) adopt stop-gap regulations that aren’t effective in the long run. This simply won’t do. We must instead come to terms with the strategic, economic and moral importance of moving to cleaner, safer sources of energy.

This way of conceptualizing the BP spill has some surprising implications. Consider just three:

First, if President Obama fails going forward to take real, substantial steps to prevent off-shore drilling disasters like this one in the future, he will in effect be failing to protect the United States from a grave political, economic and cultural threat. It would be quite similar to a sitting President failing to protect our economic and political institutions from terrorist attacks.

Second, the real strategic interests of the United States must be given pride of place when energy policy is created and enforced; we must temper our short-term concerns with finding new sources of oil and instead give primacy to clean energy solutions that work.

Third, we must really commit ourselves to clean energy in a way that makes a range of policy blunders – e.g., not forcing BP to do a comprehensive environmental impact and safety study before drilling in the Gulf – beyond the realm of the possible.

The BP spill is no ordinary ecological disaster. It’s an attack on our real, long-term interests as a liberal democracy that values meaningful self-government, human welfare, and responsible energy consumption. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we will be able to move in the right direction.

Related posts:

1. Dubious Decisions on Drilling: Why Obama Should Reconsider Offshore Drilling in the Wake of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
2. The Prospects for the Oil Spill and Deficit Commissions
3. Drilling Our Way to a Climate Change Solution?

With the oil slick from Deepwater Horizon lapping at the shores of Louisiana, all sorts of doubts about the wisdom of offshore drilling are suddenly gushing up to the surface. Environmentalists and liberals long against offshore drilling are latching on to the disaster as hard proof that the potential costs of offshore drilling outweigh any possible benefits. In his recent op-ed for the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote, “President Obama needs to seize the moment; he needs to take on the “Drill, baby, drill” crowd, telling America that courting irreversible environmental disaster for the sake of a few barrels of oil, an amount that will hardly affect our dependence on imports, is a terrible bargain.” Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Florida, agreed, saying that “Drilling too close to the coast poses too great a risk to the economy and the environment of Florida and other coastal states.” Even Governor Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has decided not to allow additional offshore drilling in California in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Obviously, many of these reactions have more to do with politics and popularity than a sustained analysis of the costs and benefits of offshore drilling. But as my colleague John Prandato recently wrote, this is true for almost every aspect of the offshore drilling debate, which tends to be highly political rather than pragmatic in nature. Political considerations were largely behind Obama’s recent lifting of the ban on offshore drilling, a decision aimed at bolstering Republican support for climate change legislation. If it had worked, Obama’s concession might have been an acceptable sacrifice: Republican and conservative Democratic support is necessary to pass climate change legislation, and removing the ban on offshore drilling was seen as a potential trade for that support. Unfortunately, however, Obama’s gamble didn’t suceed. While Republicans dutifully applauded the decision, it isn’t clear that Obama won any actual Republican votes from it. And although some conservative Democrats, notably Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb, may sign on to support the bill, their backing comes at the cost of more liberal and environmentally-minded lawmakers such as Nelson. Thus, as a political strategy aimed at garnering the votes necessary to pass climate change legislation, Obama’s decision to open up offshore drilling is looking like a wash.

Without any political boons, the administration’s justification for its decision must now rest on the laurels of pragmatic policy- essentially, that the benefits of offshore drilling outweigh the potentially catastrophic human and environmental risks that are being made so painfully obvious in the Gulf of Mexico right now. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that offshore drilling is good energy policy. According to the best government estimates, around 18 billion barrels of technically recoverable crude oil were protected under the moratorium. At current consumption rates, if these offshore reserves were to become magically available to consumers tomorrow, they would only be able to meet the U.S.’s total energy needs for about 2 and a half years. But the oil will not be available anytime in the near future. At the very soonest, production would not start for at least another seven years, and there would be “no significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.” Overall, it is not likely that offshore drilling will go very far towards reducing American dependence on foreign oil imports, nor will it have a meaningful impact on the price and availability of oil. In short, it is not a solution, or even a partial solution, to America’s energy problems.

Essentially, then, Obama has agreed to a questionable energy policy with potentially devastating impacts as a political sacrifice for votes he didn’t end up getting. Not a great deal. So what to do? In all likelihood, the future of offshore drilling is likely to remain a matter of political concessions aimed at hammering out energy legislation. But that doesn’t mean Obama shouldn’t at least take the opportunity given to him- as perverse as it sounds- by the Deepwater Horizon spill to ask American citizens to seriously examine the future of America’s energy security and our nation’s dependence on oil. Were Obama to step up and admit he made a miscalculation on the safety of offshore drilling, he could make an important move toward pushing Americans to invest in and adopt clean energy as an alternative to short-lived and dangerous oil drilling. While the Deepwater Horizon spill may be just one accident, it should be enough to remind us that sustainable energy, not offshore drilling, is where we should be focusing our efforts.

Related posts:

1. Drilling Our Way to a Climate Change Solution?
2. Bipartisan gift to the planet
3. The Prospects for the Oil Spill and Deficit Commissions

On Wednesday, President Obama announced a proposal to lift the long-standing ban on offshore oil and natural gas drilling off much of the south Atlantic and north Alaskan coasts, as well as parts of the Gulf of Mexico. The announcement has drawn the ire of critics across the political spectrum. Some on the left are outraged by Obama’s “betrayal” of his environmentalist base, and some on the right have called the extent of new offshore access insufficient. In reality, the policy he outlined will do very little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and it will have no effect on oil prices in the foreseeable future. And Obama knows it. From the administration’s perspective, this announcement is about one thing: building support in the Senate for comprehensive climate change and energy legislation.

Studies have shown that offshore drilling will have very little impact on domestic oil prices. In fact, not a drop of new oil from this proposal would be seen for at least seven years, and the modest uptick in production and negligible price dip would not even be felt for two decades. Offshore drilling’s impact on real prices pales in comparison to that which could result from sound financial regulatory reform to curb speculation in commodity futures exchanges, or from putting a stop to the supply manipulation routinely practiced by OPEC in response to the artificially rising demand.

Nevertheless, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham – who is expected to introduce a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by John Kerry and Joe Lieberman within the next month – has insisted that offshore drilling be part of the energy equation of the future. Obama’s announcement on Wednesday follows similar concessions in recent months to conservative nuclear and coal interests. The administration’s Fiscal Year 2011 budget request included $36 billion for the nuclear loan guarantee program and the stimulus bill included $3.8 billion for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) research and development.

With an otherwise small chance of success for a Senate bill resembling the House version that passed last summer, these were concessions that Obama knew he simply had to make. Comprehensive climate change and energy legislation can not pass on a strictly party-line basis. The most recent analysis of the prospects for legislation in the Senate by Environment and Energy Daily lists 41 “yes” or “likely yes” voters – with Graham being the sole Republican – and 30 “fence sitters”, consisting of 19 Democrats and 11 Republicans. But last August, a group of 10 moderate Democrats from mostly Midwest coal-dependent states said in a letter to Obama that they would not support a bill that limits greenhouse gas emissions unless American industries are protected from competition by countries that do not adopt similar standards. And just last week, a separate group of 10 coastal Democrats wrote a letter to Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham to insist that they would not support a bill that “greatly expands” offshore drilling. With so many competing interests within the Democratic Party, Republican support will be not just important, but necessary.

Comprehensive climate change and energy legislation will be a heavy lift, and the end result will be far from perfect. But if Obama’s wink-and-nod to the oil lobby frames the debate in his favor and bridges the political divide on comprehensive legislation, then this is a price that proponents of a strong and lasting climate change solution should be more than willing to pay.

With this latest concession, Obama has shown a willingness to slight a major portion of his political base for the sake of bipartisan support for comprehensive climate change and energy policy. In an op-ed co-authored by Kerry and Graham in The New York Times, the two Senators acknowledged that “this process requires honest give-and-take and genuine bipartisanship.” Now it’s time for those who support a broad ‘all-of-the-above’ package of energy solutions to come to the table and help shape legislation that will put a price on carbon and lead America toward a clean, secure, and independent energy future.

Related posts:

1. Dubious Decisions on Drilling: Why Obama Should Reconsider Offshore Drilling in the Wake of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
2. Bipartisan gift to the planet
3. Is election year bipartisanship possible?

By almost any standard, the outcome of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last week fell well short of its increasingly humble expectations. Copenhagen was considered pivotal because the “Bali Roadmap” laid out in 2007 circled this meeting on the calendar as the conclusion of the negotiating period which was to create a legally-binding post-Kyoto agreement. But by the beginning of the conference, the goal had been reduced to just establishing a politically-binding framework that would set the world on a course toward reaching a comprehensive international agreement in 2010.

Modest yet politically significant emissions reduction pledges by the US, China, and others prior to the conference contributed to a mood of cautious optimism at the outset of the two-week summit. But on just the second day, the massive rift between developed and developing countries was exposed with the leak of the so-called “Danish text” – drawn up by delegates from Denmark, Australia, the UK, and the US – which would allegedly place most of the power in the hands of developed countries at the expense of developing countries. The text was dismissed by the executive secretary of the UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer, as just an “informal” draft. But China quickly fired back with its own draft text, flipping the blame and the burden onto wealthy countries. A day later, delegates from the US and China traded barbs as the US State Department Envoy Todd Stern told reporters that “there’s no way to solve this problem by giving the major developing countries a pass,” to which Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei responded that Stern either “lacks common sense” or is “extremely irresponsible”.

The controversy stirred up in the first few days served as a precursor for the deep division between rich and poor countries that would plague the remainder of the negotiations. The next week was remarkably unproductive. Countless controversial draft texts fluttered around the Bella Center amid a walkout by African countries and thousands of angry rioters – impatient with the lack of progress – taking to the streets. With the looming arrival of over a hundred heads of state, the symbolic dichotomy of rich vs. poor countries had grown ever clearer and was threatening to derail the negotiations.

On the second to last day, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a substantial overture, committing the US to help build a $100 billion annual fund by 2020, contingent upon an international verification system to monitor emissions cuts. But China insisted that it would not submit to any international monitoring, calling such a system “intrusive” and an infringement on its sovereignty. With the world leaders due to arrive the next day, the US and China had reached an impasse. On the eve of the summit’s conclusion, the high-level representatives worked round-the-clock until 5 am to produce a draft text for the heads of state. Three hours later, Air Force One touched down in Copenhagen and President Obama was presented with the two and a half page draft agreement. At the Friday morning plenary, Obama reiterated the need for an international verification system, declaring that “without such accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page.” Evidently, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao took offense, boycotting a pair of crucial negotiation sessions, instead sending his Vice Foreign Minister. A frustrated Obama reportedly said that “it would be nice to negotiate with somebody who can make political decisions.”

Obama finally managed to meet with Wen and, as time expired, the US, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa struck a mild deal to snatch the conference from the grip of complete catastrophe. Obama called the Copenhagen Accord a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” but admitted its glaring deficiencies, citing the inability to overcome a “fundamental deadlock in perspectives.” The agreement is woefully inadequate, having stripped nearly all of the substance from the early morning draft. The Copenhagen Accord includes a three-year, $30 billion “jump-start” financing system for developing countries and an aspirational $100 billion per year Copenhagen Green Climate Fund to take effect in 2020. But it does not include explicit goals for near or long term emissions reduction targets, nor does it include a commitment to a sound international verification system. Most disappointingly, the Copenhagen Accord dropped the previously agreed upon timeline for sealing a legally-binding international treaty by the late 2010 COP16 meeting in Mexico City.

The US arrived in Copenhagen considered by most to be the main obstructionist to a global deal, but there is little doubt that the Chinese took home that ignominious prize. The tireless attempts by each side to cast the other as the villain may have doomed the negotiations long before the Obama-Wen showdown on the final day. Still, there is plenty of blame to go around, not the least of which should be placed on the US Senate for failing to pass legislation prior to Copenhagen. There were also flaws in the structure of the conference itself, as it was poorly organized and even more poorly executed. In the end, Copenhagen will likely be remembered as one small step in the right direction. But there remains a very long road ahead toward breaking the stalemate between the world’s rich and poor. Next stop: Mexico City.

Related posts:

1. Copenhagen Conference Kicks Off
2. Adapting Along the Road to Copenhagen
3. Hazy Reasoning on Black Carbon

On Friday President Obama will attend the Copenhagen climate change conference.  There will be much anticipation about what commitments the United States and the other participating countries will make.  While the big whigs discuss issues like “carbon caps” and “emission targets”, some folks back on the home front will probably feel relieved that they are doing their part – perhaps by driving less or turning to “green” technologies.

Mike Tidwell, however, tells these people in a column published last week to think again.   It’s time to “stop going green” he says.  No, he’s not a global warming denier.  He’s a climate activist fed up with piecemeal contributions made voluntarily by individuals.

Tidwell writes,

December should be national Green-Free Month. Instead of continuing our faddish and counterproductive emphasis on small, voluntary actions, we should follow the example of Americans during past moral crises and work toward large-scale change…..surveys show that very few people are willing to make significant voluntary changes, and those of us who do create the false impression of mass progress as the media hypes our actions.

Tidwell is right that the sum of the voluntary actions taken by Americans probably make little difference in the overall progress of global warming.  The incentives in our society are set up to promote the exploitation of resources.  A ton of coal not burned has no financial value.  Most polluters pay little of the cost of the environmental damage they create.  All the best intentions by well-meaning people can do little to overcome the power of the marketplace.  Yes, Tidwell is right that broader systemic change is needed.  This recognition, however, should not lead one to dismiss individual efforts.

Tidwell sees the efforts of individuals as a zero sum game.  A concerned citizen, for example, might have time and energy to devote two hours a week to combating global warming.  In Tidwell’s world, that person can either choose to buy and install a few compact fluorescent bulbs in his household or he could write or call his elected representative and encourage him to support climate change legislation.  Since this well-meaning individual only has two hours to spare, time spent on one activity will mean that the other activity gets sidelined.  In such a world, I would agree that the person should send off that letter.  But, we all know that the world doesn’t actually work that way.

Frequently our individual actions shape our policy opinions – and sometimes our advocacy efforts towards elected representatives.  Let’s consider another hypothetical person.  One could imagine a scenario whereby a typical consumer hasn’t thought much about the environment when making lifestyle decisions.  The reality is that for most Americans these days it’s relatively low on the priority list.  In fact, a Pew study conducted this year found that 85 percent of Americans felt that the economy was a top priority and only 35 percent considered global warming to be.  In these tough economic times, there’s more work to be done to convince the American public of the severity of the threat.

But let’s say that this person decided to buy a CFC light bulb because this will save some money.  When buying the bulb this consumer also learns about the environmental benefit that the purchase produced and feels good about it.  In Tidwell’s world, that’s the end of the story.

Let’s consider what might happen later to this consumer.  After repeatedly buying such bulbs, the person begins to think of himself as someone who cares for the environment and he might even eventually end up speaking up at a town hall meeting or even writing a letter to his congressperson.  No, it won’t happen overnight and it certainly won’t happen for everyone.  But, small lifestyle changes in the near term can eventually lead to greater sacrifices in the long term.

We should continue to ask consumers to make these small lifestyle changes even if they don’t immediately impact global warming.  In the longer term policy, they just might.  It’s also important that the President and our other elected leaders continue to highlight the security concerns presented by global climate change and the potential job-making opportunities of reforms.  Yes, there will be short term costs, but these are outweighed by the long term benefits to the economy, our security, and the environment.

I’m also bothered by faddish environmentalism, but it’s not yet time to ditch the hybrid and throw out those flourescent bulbs.

Related posts:

1. Hazy Reasoning on Black Carbon
2. Copenhagen Conference Kicks Off
3. Picking Up the Pieces in Copenhagen

In September, PSA released a statement signed by 33 prominent Republicans and Democrats urging Congress and the Administration to “develop a clear, comprehensive, realistic and broadly bipartisan plan to address our role in the climate change crisis.” The signatories warned that “if we fail to take action now, we will have little hope of influencing other countries to reduce their own harmful contributions to climate change, or of forging a coordinated international response.” The Senate has already failed to deliver legislation prior to the conference, but it is not too late for the U.S. to take the lead in the negotiations, especially since it will be impossible for a global consensus to emerge from Copenhagen without strong U.S. support.

President Obama will join many other heads of state in Copenhagen on the conference’s final day with an offer to cut U.S. emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. China and India have also proposed reduction targets of 40-45% and 20-25%, respectively, in the “carbon intensity” of the economy – or carbon emissions per unit of GDP – by 2020, which will not actually result in any tangible reduction in emissions as long as these countries’ GDPs continue to rise. None of these commitments satisfy the 25-40% emissions cuts sought by the UN and deemed necessary by leading climate scientists.

PSA’s statement also urged that “we must also help less developed countries adapt to the realities and consequences of a drastically changed climate. Doing so now will help avoid humanitarian disasters and political instability in the future that could ultimately threaten the security of the U.S. and our allies.”

In the days leading up to the conference, the U.S proposed a global fund, operating under the World Bank, which would devote billions of dollars to help poor countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. While the level of funding remains an extremely contentious issue, the structure of such a fund is a critical first step, and the initiative taken by the U.S. is a positive sign.

Significant progress in Copenhagen can lay the foundation for action in the Senate and for a legally-binding global agreement in the next year. The next two weeks in Copenhagen present an enormous opportunity for the U.S. and the world to move toward these goals in confronting global climate change. The world must act now, and the U.S. must lead.

Related posts:

1. Picking Up the Pieces in Copenhagen
2. Adapting Along the Road to Copenhagen
3. Bipartisan breakthrough on climate change

On Wednesday, Barbara Boxer and John Kerry introduced the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, the long-awaited Senate version of the climate change bill that squeaked through the House in June. With the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen just nine weeks away, U.S. legislative action will be a key to successful global negotiations. Particularly, investment in international adaptation – the multilateral assistance to developing countries in order to withstand the impacts of climate change – is widely expected to be one of the central elements of the looming debate in Copenhagen. Whereas climate change mitigation policies aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation seeks to lessen the vulnerability and enhance the resilience of the most at-risk countries through disaster management and infrastructure capacity-building. Kerry has called international adaptation “part of the glue” holding together hopes of reaching a new global treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. Still, investment in adaptation – at both the domestic and international levels – has been continuously overlooked.

The international security crises associated with climate change are dramatic and self-perpetuating. Drought, rising sea levels, and resource scarcity will lead to disease, mass migration, and political instability, ultimately causing fragile states to collapse into failed states. These cascading effects are intensified with the Earth’s population projected to reach nine billion by 2050. And in a cruel twist of irony, the most devastating effects will be felt in parts of the world that are least responsible for global climate change, specifically Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

In North Africa, subsistence farming will suffer a 20-40% reduction in crop yield due to prolonged drought and desertification. Drought will hit the Middle East hard as well, a region that is already home to 6% of the world’s population but just 2% of the Earth’s water supply. And with 60% of the Middle East’s bodies of water lying trans-boundary, the stage is set for conflict. As John Kerry said, “a demographic boom and a shrinking water supply will only tighten the squeeze on a region that doesn’t need another reason to disagree violently.”

In South Asia, the Indus river system, running from India through Kashmir and into Pakistan, may become seasonal as a result of the melting Siachen Glacier, thereby destroying the region’s agriculture and threatening the livelihood of 75% of Pakistan’s 160 million people.

Bangladesh is perhaps the most classic example of the devastation that climate change will cause. A sea level rise of one meter, as is expected in coming decades, will displace 20 million people in low-lying coastal areas of the South Asian country. Salt water intrusion will have further indirect impacts by crippling the rice crops. The Minister of Disaster Management, Dr. Muhammed Abdur Razzaque, has pleaded, to no avail, for $5 billion over the next five years from the international community to develop coastal defense mechanisms similar to those in the Netherlands, although that sum would still almost certainly amount to just a fraction of what Bangladesh needs.

All told, there will be about 200 million environmentally displaced people (EDPs) by 2050, mostly in areas of the world that are already among the most politically unstable. Needless to say, the importance – and cost – of adapting to these changes is enormous. Estimated funding needs range from $9-20 billion per year from 2010-2020 according to ClimateWorks’ Project Catalyst to as much as $40–170 billion annually, according to the most recent estimate by the UNFCCC. Preliminary results of the World Bank’s Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change (EACC) study – the “most in-depth analysis of the economics of adaptation to climate change to date” – estimates costs in the order of $75-100 billion per year from 2010-2050.

The U.S. would likely be called on to provide about 25% of the global total under an international agreement, based on existing international institutions and funding efforts. This figure is also roughly proportionate to the U.S. share of historical global emissions since the beginning of the industrial era (the U.S. has emitted about 90-95 billion metric tons of carbon since 1800). But Waxman-Markey allocates just 1% of the allowances from 2012 to 2021 under its cap-and-trade scheme toward international adaptation efforts. This translates to about $700-900 million per year. Even by the most modest funding projections, the numbers fall far short. This prompted an unusual coalition of environmental and faith-based NGOs to write a letter addressed to Senators Kerry and Lugar urging them to dedicate at least an additional 2% of allowances for international adaptation (which would raise the total investment to 3%). Yet the Boxer-Kerry bill is, so far, silent on precisely how much would be allocated to international adaptation.

If the U.S. delegation arrives in Copenhagen without a clear commitment to adaptation it would present a major setback for an international treaty. Copenhagen is not the end of the road for global climate change negotiations, but it is a crucial chance for real progress. With 50,000 delegates from 190 nations expected in Copenhagen, inability to make substantial strides would be a disastrous missed opportunity, especially when considering the Kyoto deal took eight years to finish and the Copenhagen negotiations are less than a year old. If a new international framework is not ratified by 2012, Kyoto will fall away without a successor agreement. If the Senate does not take strong action now, it would reduce U.S. leverage and send a poor message to the international community. Ambassador John Bruton, head of the European Commission Delegation to the United States, warned that inaction “would open the United States to the charge that it does not take its international commitments seriously, and that these commitments will always take second place to domestic politics.” He added, “the United States emits 25 percent of all the greenhouse gases that the Conference is trying to reduce. Is the US Senate really expecting all the other countries to make a serious effort on climate change at the Copenhagen Conference in the absence of a clear commitment from the United States?”

Now is the time for decisive action on the domestic front. A successful global treaty will be built around a core of strong U.S. legislation that, in particular, addresses the unavoidable needs of international adaptation. And the pressure is on from the international community. The U.S. never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but both China and India did. Yesterday, India’s environment minister called the Senate bill a “measly” effort. A recent poll from WorldPublicOpinion.org found that the U.S. public ranked dead last out of 19 countries when asked how high a priority should be placed on addressing climate change. The developing world needs a powerful and convincing signal of commitment from the United States. If the U.S. arrives in Copenhagen dragging its feet, it will forfeit the credibility needed to play a leadership role in the negotiations.

Above all, climate change must be treated not as a national security issue or as a regional security issue, but as a human security issue. Instability in any part of the world is a threat to the United States. The longer the U.S. and the world delays action on international adaptation, the deeper the hole we will find ourselves in when we inevitably start to climb out.

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3. Hazy Reasoning on Black Carbon

Every February and March, a black haze descends onto mainland Southeast Asia, lowering visibility and driving thousands of people with respiratory complaints into hospital emergency rooms. The cause of this haze has been known for years- the widespread use of slash-and-burn agriculture that results in large swathes of farmland going up in flames annually. What hasn’t been known until recently, however, is the global impact that hazes like this, made up of airborne soot, has had not only on air quality but on the earth’s rising temperature. Scientists now believe that soot, more formally known as black carbon, is responsible for almost twenty percent of the increase in the earth’s temperature over the past century, making it the largest contributing factor to climate change after carbon dioxide. Through legislation aimed at further reducing domestic black carbon emissions and promoting international projects and agreements aimed at emissions cuts, Congress can take immediate, definitive steps towards reducing black carbon’s effect on the rate of climate change.

The impact of black carbon on climate change is sobering. Produced not only by slash-and-burn agriculture but also rudimentary cook stoves and diesel engines, black carbon is found throughout the world. While the highest concentrations of emissions come from Asia- most notably India and China- the U.S. is also a major polluter, with per-capita emissions roughly equal to those of most Southeast Asian countries and responsibility for 6.1% of total global emissions. Incomplete combustion from fuel sources releases black carbon into the atmosphere, where it absorbs sunlight and creates heat. The particles then float out of the atmosphere and settle on the ground, often on ice or snow, where they cause additional damage. Indeed, the most serious problem that black carbon poses is its warming effect on glaciers and large ice masses. Almost half of Arctic melting to date has been caused by black carbon, which reduces snow and ice’s reflective properties and increases heat retention. In India, black carbon poses a serious threat to the Himalayan glaciers, an essential water source for much of Asia, and one whose demise would have devastating effects on population survival and productivity. In turn, Arctic and glacial melting themselves hold serious consequences for the earth’s climate, as a reduction in ice “can create positive feedbacks leading to even further warming.” The Arctic is already warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, making it the region most heavily affected by climate change. As permafrost in the Arctic thaws, the vast quantities of carbon and methane currently frozen will be released into the atmosphere, further accelerating climate change. Thus, black carbon is not only a heavyweight contributor to climate change but a critical catalyst for other processes that themselves contribute to climate change.

At first, the appearance of black carbon as a new foe in the fight against climate change appears to be yet another setback against progress. On closer examination, however, the opposite is true. The existence of black carbon is good news, not bad. Like carbon dioxide, black carbon is a significant contributor to global warming- experts estimate that the warming effect of black carbon is around 30-60% of carbon dioxide’s. However, unlike carbon dioxide, which can stay in the atmosphere for centuries, black carbon has a short life span, staying in the atmosphere for an average of two weeks. This means that measures taken to reduce black carbon emissions now would have an almost immediate effect on the rate of global warming. In their recent article in Foreign Affairs, Jessica Wallack and Veerabhadran Ramanathan calculated that “fully applying existing emissions-control technologies could cut black carbon emissions by about 50 percent [which] would be enough to offset the warming effects of one to two decades’ worth of carbon-dioxide emissions.” Simple, inexpensive technologies and strategies for effectively reducing black carbon- such as replacing traditional stoves in the developing world with more efficient ones, or retrofitting diesel engines with carbon filters-  already exist.

Furthermore, unlike strategies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, reducing black carbon can be done without impacting economic growth. As Wallack and Ramanathan point out, black carbon emissions “can be reduced without necessarily limiting the underlying activity that generated them [as] black carbon [precursors] are not essential byproducts of energy use.” This means that developing countries like China and India, which are fond of arguing that emissions cuts are a Western ploy to slow growth, could theoretically agree to programs targeting black carbon without the painful, drawn-out, and impotent international agreements that have characterized climate-change policy so far.

So, the question remains, why aren’t we addressing black carbon in our national climate-change debate?  It certainly isn’t because the government is ignorant of black carbon’s existence. Congress has known about both the threats posed by black carbon and benefits of reducing it for years. In October of 2007, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on black carbon and global warming which finished with six conclusions, the most important of which are:

-“Black carbon is the second leading cause of global warming”

-“Decreasing emissions will immediately slow global warming”

-“Decreasing emissions will immediately improve public health”

-“Opportunities to decrease emissions exist now”

Even so, Congress’s progress so far has been negligible, with one exception- the stimulus bill, which set aside an additional $300 million for reducing diesel emissions. Unfortunately, while reducing domestic diesel emissions is a good start, it is not a comprehensive solution for U.S. emissions and certainly not viable for international reductions. Excluding the stimulus bill, the only legislation that mentions black carbon does not call for immediate action but instead suggests further studies. In the house, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 devoted just a few pages to black carbon- Sections 333 and 851.  Section 333 stipulated only that the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency must submit a report to Congress on black carbon emissions in one year, while Section 851 required that in eighteen months the Administrator either propose regulations on black carbon emissions or determine that existing regulations are sufficient.

In the Senate, the only legislation on black carbon is S. 849, “A bill to require the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a study on black carbon emissions.” But the bipartisan bill, is simply another example of Congress kicking the can further down the road. Even if S. 849 passes, it won’t exactly be a harbinger of progress, as the bill merely requires a report on black carbon a year after the bill is enacted.

The lack of legislative process on black carbon so far stands in contrast to public statements by members of Congress. “Taking bold steps to reduce black carbon emissions is a win-win situation because it will lessen the threat of global warming and improve global public health,” Senator Thomas R. Carper [D-DE], Chairman of the Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety, said. Senator John Kerry [D-MA] went even further in a speech delivered at the national press club this July, saying that “unless we act dramatically—and act fast— science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy.” Both Carper and Kerry, co-sponsors of S. 849, should be commended for taking a public stance on climate change. However, it is unclear why both senators- Kerry in particular- are not following their words with the dramatic action and bold legislative steps that they agree are so important, particularly when these steps are so uncontroversial.

What is clear is that by pushing back serious discussions on black carbon, Congress is ignoring the opportunity for politically and economically feasible action that would represent an important step forward for U.S. climate policy. With Boxer-Kerry (hopefully) making its way to the Senate soon, and Copenhagen 2009 in only three months, now is the time for Congress to live up to its declarations and take concrete action against black carbon.

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2. Copenhagen Conference Kicks Off
3. Drilling Our Way to a Climate Change Solution?