Pay no attention to me, I’m only the REAL elephant in the room.

But you want to know what scares me to death? That people like you, whom people like me turn to for guidance, are wasting time calling each other names and then, even worse, are arguing about whether you’ve called each other names.

We don’t have time for this! Honest to God, please. And if you are going to have pissing matches. Can you please have them in private where every member of the press can read them? It’s a massive distraction. And besides it’s so boringly stereotypical of progressives to indulge themselves in public infighting.

You guys should not be fighting a PR battle against each other but against Exxon. Be smarter about this, would you? When exchanging ideas publically do it in respectful ways. You don’t even really disagree that much.

I don’t want to read in the Times about how people in the climate change camp are arguing with each other. I want to read about how they are working together to come up to integrate a lot of important ideas.

If you guys can’t stop the name calling in public, then you know what? You are all delayers. You, too, Joe.

All the best,
Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man

1. The energy density for solar, geothermal and wind is so low that there will always be a need for backup base load systems using concentrated energy. Alt eng has never been seriously considered because the energy balances have been known for decades and they are not able to change much (e.g. incident watt per sq m of sunlight).

2, You can place as many imposts as you chhose to design on fossil fuel burning, and you can trade in emissions. All plausible outcomes I have seen produce a significant drop in standard of living. Any emission trading scheme that collects money from GHG emitters and gives it to others, is giving it to others who will prodece their own GHG. There is practically no way to spend extra money without ptoducing extra GHG. Name one?

3. Many bogus forestry schems are already in action. If you do your sums, you will fing that sequestration is significant if (and only if) (a) the mass of carbon per unit area is increased by the forestry and (b) that mass, or near to it, is maintained IN PERPETUITY. FOREVER. Otherwise you just make a little blip on the graph as the land reverts to BAU.

4. The ONLY technology that satisfies main criteria is nuclear. Show me wrong and I’ll give you a lolly.

A carbon price that is not high enough to drive rapid deployment of clean energy technologies but that significantly raises energy prices and risks significant public backlash is the worst of both worlds. That is why we have consistently taken the position that we ought to have a modest price that is consistent, stable and politically sustainable. The price necessary to drive wholesale transition to clean energy technologies is higher than most, if not all democracies are likely to tolerate (and much higher than present or future carbon prices in the EU are likely to rise). So rather than fight a pitched battle to increase carbon prices to levels that become increasingly unsustainable politically even as they do not approach levels that will drive deep reductions in emissions and rapid transition to renewables, we believe we are much better served accepting a lower price paired with very large direct public investments in technology to drive down the price of clean energy alternatives rapidly such that they are cost competitive with a lower carbon price.

To be sure, the higher we set the carbon price, the less we need to drive down the cost of clean energy technologies before they are cost competitive. But if we are serious about seeing real progress as soon as possible we are better served accepting lower carbon prices paired with higher public investment than holding our breath until we get higher carbon prices which may not be sustainable politically once the American public receives the bill in the form of higher energy prices.

This is all the more true given that the challenge is not simply to reduce US carbon emissions but to dramatically reduce global carbon emissions. So even if we are able to establish high carbon prices such that clean energy technologies becomes cost competitive at higher prices in the US, we are unlikely to see similarly high carbon prices established in India and China. So the explicit objective of US climate policies must not be simply to reduce our own carbon emissions but to the rapidly drive down the cost of clean energy technologies in real, deployed, unsubsidized terms such that they are cost competitive in developing economies where there will likely be no price for carbon. If we do not accomplish the latter objective very rapidly, we are quite simply sunk.

All of the above is the reason that we put much more emphasis on making clean energy vastly cheaper than on making dirty energy vastly more expensive and hence are more willing to accept lower carbon prices in exchange for much higher public technology investments.

Alternatively, consider the costs of burning biomass plus CCS. Torrified wood will compete successfully with $(US) 80 per short ton coal for burning in utilities’ coal reactors, the current delivered price for Central Appalachian coal. Add an assumed $(US) 20 per short ton of coal equivalent for the CCS. That’s $(US) 100 per ton Central Appalachian coal equivalent. That is likely to be the actual cost of the coal in 2–3 years. In the meantime, subsidize it.

Note: The CCS cost might be 2–3 times the stated cost. Subsidize that portion.

Eventually this is going to be paid for by taxpayers/consumers in two forms: either payments for services and goods and/or through taxes.

In the end it will be a mixture of the two sources.

I think you guys are hung up on government as the only consumer/payer and therefore paying exclusively through tax revenue.

You also underestimate the importance of paying more for energy and the behavioral and economic effects that will have on people….yes that sounds like “old environmentalism” but there is a sound economic rationale behind it. The Europeans and Japanese pay more for energy and they are much more efficient with it than we are, even us Californians.