Conference: Washington Summit on
Climate Stabilization

A Moral and Profitable Path to
Climate Stabilization

By John C. Topping, Jr., and Erin Frey

John C. Topping, Jr,, a former Staff Director of the Office of Air and Radiation of the US Environmental Protection Agency, has been President of the Climate Institute since its founding in 1986. Erin Frey, an Environmental Science and Public Policy major at Harvard College where she is a member of the Class of 2008, provided the principal background research for this paper as well as Co-Authoring it. The Co-Authors are grateful to Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist of the Climate Institute, for his very helpful review comments.

Corporate Involvement
A Role for the Government - State Initiatives
International Efforts | Conclusion and Notes

Energy is the lifeblood of our nation—of our world. Electricity travels through the veins of wires that encircle the globe, bringing light, heat, food, water, and power to the remotest corners of the Earth. Wherever it touches, civilization grows, flourishes, thrives. Without it, society is reduced to scratching existence from the earth. Motor vehicles, vessels and planes, powered almost entirely from fossil fuels, also have undergirded our economy and greatly expanded our mobility.

But while fossil-fuel energy bolsters and builds civilizations, it carries with it a silent threat, one that is only beginning to be realized and accepted. Power plants, automobiles, and factories have been belching out carbon dioxide gas for over a century, quietly amplifying the invisible, heat-trapping blanket that layers our planet. The natural greenhouse effect as it existed in pre-industrial times was largely responsible for the fairly equable climates in which human civilization arose. Yet now an enhanced greenhouse effect, a product largely of industrial activity, farming and shedding of forest cover, threatens soon to take us to greenhouse concentrations and global average temperatures outside the range of anything the global community has encountered.

Only now are we beginning to understand the implications of our actions, and realize how dire their effects may be. Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are causing changes at rates faster than most scientists were predicting a decade ago. While some of the added effects can be attributed to the rapid industrialization of China, India, and other booming Asian economies, feedback effects are causing sea ice-retreat, glacial melting, sea level rise, and ecosystem impacts that are greater than anticipated. We are only beginning to appreciate many phenomena that are being amplified by the increasingly evident pace of warming.

The accelerating pace of environmental change, apparent government disinterest in strong measures to curb global warming and the world’s insatiable appetite for fossil fuels are convincing many that we are nearing a “climatic tipping point.” Once that point is reached, the resulting changes are likely to become irreversible. Without decisive and promptly implemented actions, there is a real chance that global climate change could spiral out of control, devastating humanity and endangering many species and destroying entire habitats. Especially troubling is the prospect that increased sea surface temperatures and rising ocean acidity may greatly disrupt the marine food chain.

James Hansen, one of the world’s foremost climate scientists and director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has said that the world has less than 10 years to take dramatic steps toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “We are not now on a path to do that, and if we do not begin actions to get on a different path within the next several years, we will pass a point of no return”, he says.45

Other scientists warn that to avoid the most serious consequences, we must cut global carbon emissions in half over the next 50 years.46 But those steps to cut emissions must begin in the next decade, before we cause irreparable damage to our planet.

Reducing the United States’ emissions of carbon dioxide may seem daunting; fossil fuels are entrenched into every aspect of American life. But choosing to become less dependent on coal, oil and natural gas by greatly increasing efficiency of energy use and embracing renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydrogen power are not as difficult as might first appear. Americans have always been at the forefront in addressing technological challenges, creating new products and making existing technology smaller, faster, cheaper and more efficient. The first computers were agonizingly slow, room-sized, multi million dollar machines. Today, they can be carried around in backpacks, disseminate information around the world in a fraction of a second, and cost a fraction of their original price. The computer transformation took less than 50 years. The energy transformation away from fossil fuels can be achieved in this time scale as well. But it must start now.

The United States’ conversion away from carbon emitting energy sources must be a simultaneous effort by the government, industry and the general public. Together, the public and private sector can influence the supply and the demand for alternative energy, increase greatly the efficiency of energy conversion, transmission and end use and reduce America’s consumption of coal, oil and natural gas.

This Summit Background Paper highlights some encouraging signs, especially by the leadership of industry, financial institutions, governments and civil society in moving to a lower carbon intensity economy. We focus on practical, proven technologies that can make a difference now, and do so quickly. Because their potential is less immediate, and in some cases less certain, we have chosen not to focus in detail on three longer term approaches, namely the role of nuclear power, the use of sequestration, and the potential for geo-engineering to arrest a slide into a climatic abyss. It is possible some of these approaches may play a significant role in the future, but there are so many opportunities for action now that we are focused instead on what can be done and is being done now and in the near future.*

Leadership Examples

Energy transformation is likely to be the core of any successful strategy of climate protection. A few companies and governments have cautiously stepped into this role, creating examples for their peers to follow. Some large companies are beginning to use their market power to force consumers to buy only environmentally-friendly products, while many other corporations are investing large amounts of capital in alternative energies. These actions serve to increase the demand for and the supply of renewable energy.

Though the federal government in the US is placing little urgency in seriously addressing global warming, many state and international governments are starting to take substantial actions and are working to increase the supply of energy from non-carbon-emitting technologies. In the US, more than in Europe or Japan, key energy decisions are more often made at the state and local level rather than at the national level. For this reason, state legislatures and regulatory commissions setting renewable portfolio standards may lead to faster and more significant cutbacks than if the drive for change were coming from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Most of the programs and policies highlighted below are still only in their infancy, but they are, nonetheless, encouraging glimpses of progress that can be improved upon and spur others to greater innovation much as has occurred in the information revolution of the past half century.

Next: Corporate Involvement
        A Role for Government - State Initiatives
        International Efforts
        Conclusion and Notes

*Nuclear power supplies about a fifth of America’s electricity and with relatively modest generation of greenhouse gases. Nuclear power can, despite controversies over waste disposal, nuclear weapons proliferation and safety, play a big role in the climate protection and energy strategies of some nations, especially in Asia. In the US, where nuclear plants must undergo rigorous and generally protracted licensing processes and compete with cheap coal plants, it appears that few new plants will be built in the absence of a steep levy that accounts for the external environmental and health costs of coal, either through a permit-based emissions cap or a pollution tax.

Sequestration can also play some role in climate protection. One obvious path involves reforestation or new planting of forests and increasing carbon storage through modified agricultural practices. Other approaches including deep ocean storage and deep well injection may ultimately be a part of the solution but for the moment still need to be proven to be significant.

Uncertainties are an even more pervasive problem for geo-engineering schemes, e.g. dispersing of sulfates into the atmosphere and seeding the oceans with iron filings. Resorting to such options should only be a last resort strategy, gone to only if climate change is continuing to accelerate while emissions are being brought down sharply, especially in that even if such approaches work, they limit only the warming and not the acidification of the ocean that so threatens marine life. If we face the climatic equivalent of a giant asteroid hurtling toward earth and imperiling mammalian life, we may want to have a range of geo-engineering options available. This should, however, be a last resort strategy, not our prime strategy otherwise we may ourselves be powering the asteroid that bears down upon us.