Are AGW solutions being mis-sold?

I’m profoundly skeptical about Anthropogenic Global Warming, but this thread isn’t about AGW, but about the proposed solutions. If you want to discuss AGW itself, there are plenty of other threads.

I can’t help wondering if the AGWers are trying to tackle things the wrong way. We hear of big, over-arching proposed agreements, multinational reports - a lot of hot air, in fact. Very reminiscent of the old planned economies of the Soviet Bloc. And we know what happenned there.

Wouldn’t it be better to work at a lower, national, level, to persuade people to act out of enlightened self-interest? Things like:

‘Even modern vehicles are smelly and noisy; why don’t we encourage people to buy hybrid vehicles which are quieter, more economical, and less noisome?’ America does this; London’s congestion charge does this; the U.K. doesn’t - the Toyota Prius is very much more expensive over here. And hybrid lorries are on the way.

‘Those coal-fired power stations burn a lot of fuel, are nasty and smelly… why don’t we replace them for now with clean, quiet nuclear plants? We can replace those later with wind / wave / solar plants when those technologies mature.’

‘That plant sure belches a lot of stuff into the atmosphere doesn’t it? Let us (the local taxpayers) help you reduce it, and we’ll make sure that new businesses in the area have to comply too.’

Water company shareholders might say something like, “We’re leaking 33% of our water. Not only is this literally money down the drain, it’s costing us to pump it down the drain. Mr Chairman, your bonus this year will be contingent on reducing leaks to X.” Of course, by reducing leaks, fewer reservoirs are needed, existing reservoirs remain fuller, and the underground aquifers aren’t so drained.

And so on.

Government wields a big stick and should wield it very lightly. Murphy’s Law and the Law of Unintended Consequences are both big factors. A bit of subtle encouragement here and there rather than dictat. Sell the projects individually, rather than as a whole. The whole is too big. Get people to realise that it’s in their better interest and you’ll be away.

What do you think?

It sounds like no matter what you’re doing you’re looking at raising taxes - unless there can be another interpretation of things like “Let us (the local taxpayers) help you reduce it”.

Which I, personally, don’t have a problem with. However, while there are people who admit to being single-issue voters to things like guns and abortion, I can assure you that the single biggest “single issue” that voters follow is taxes being raised.

-Joe

I’m not knocking your suggestions for some smaller-scale, individually-focused approaches, but you might be to some extent missing the forest for the trees here. The root of the AGW problem is that climate is global. There’s no way to just keep my emissions segregated over here in my little chunk of the atmosphere and keep your chunk of the atmosphere emissions-free. Ultimately, the process of slowing or reversing anthropogenic changes to the atmosphere and climate will **have/b] to involve some “big, over-arching agreements” that affect everybody.

It’s somewhat the same sort of setup as the ozone-layer crisis that was eventually addressed with the worldwide Montreal Protocol phasing out CFCs. The problem is fundamentally global, and it’s going to require global solutions to fix it.

That said, let’s take a look at how your proposed non-global solutions could help deal with the problem.

Then I don’t really understand what you’re suggesting. You want environmentalists to support greater use of hybrid vehicles? But environmentalists already do support greater use of hybrid vehicles. As you point out, tax credits and gasoline taxes are government-provided incentives in favor of hybrid vehicles (I don’t really see how municipal congestion charges favor hybrid vehicles over conventional ones, but maybe this is a detail of the London system I’m just not getting). What more do you want environmentalists to do about this?

Again, do you think that environmentalists aren’t active on state and local air quality issues?

This particular strategy doesn’t apply so well to public water utilities, but certainly water conservation is an important environmental issue. Again, though, what makes you think that environmentalists aren’t already concerned about this?

This is AFAICT the only area where there’s actually some significant resistance in the environmental movement to the proposed solution (at least as it applies to nuclear power). There’s still quite a bit of opposition among environmentalists to nuclear power, and a lot of that opposition is in fact reasonable. (For instance, nuclear plants require a lot of help from that governmental “big stick” you speak of, and do not have a good track record when it comes to carrying their own costs.) Nonetheless, a growing percentage of environmentalists realize that this is a triage situation here, and that the drawbacks of nuclear energy seem likely to be dwarfed in the near- to mid-term by the drawbacks of unchecked carbon burning.

For the most part, though, environmentalists are already hard at work encouraging people to be eco-friendly in their own direct best interests, not just for grandiose save-the-planet reasons. Exactly what major measures are you suggesting that the environmental community take that they’re not already taking?

Ah, I think here is where you fundamentally misunderstand the situation. The problem is not that environmentalists aren’t encouraging people to do what’s in their better interest: the problem is that, unfortunately, at least in the short term it is NOT economically in people’s better interest to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions.

In the short term, it is cheaper to use the atmosphere as a free sewer for the byproducts of burning fossil fuels than it is to spend money to reduce our emissions output. We are never really going to be able to address that fundamental problem without making our use of the atmosphere subject to market forces—i.e., putting a price on emissions.

And the problem of marketizing the global atmosphere brings us right smack back to those annoying unwieldy international agreement thingies again. It sucks, but ultimately the big old governmental approach cannot be entirely avoided with a problem like this.

This is the problem I see: pro-AGWers see it like this; I’m suggesting that instead one realises that the sources of pollution are local. Instead of saying, “Well, the U.K. only contributes X% when China contributes ZZ%…”, one can say, “The smell from that factory’s pretty bad, don’t you think? Perhaps we should do something about it?” Simple and obvious, with a short-term positive impact (no more smell).

But every little helps, doesn’t it?

I’m giving the example that they’re promoted in the U.S., but not in the U.K.

Yes, but it seems to me that they want too much.

Corporations pay far more attention to shareholders. Point out to shareholders that they can make more money and they’ll go for it like gangbusters.

Again, I think you’re taking the big view. I’m suggesting people look at the small view. Do a little bit now. Then another little bit. Then another…

This is simply not going to happen, so we should ignore it and look for other methods.

The problem with this approach is that, while there is some overlap between reducing traditional pollutants and CO2 emissions, the overlap is not complete. I.e., certainly if you conserve and use less energy, you will have less of all the emissions. And, as you noted, if you switch sources of energy to non-fossil fuels, you can reduce emissions of CO2. However, the sort of things we have been doing to clean up coal power plants (installing scrubbers, etc.), for example, while very necessary and admirable, do not reduce the CO2 emissions. And, since CO2 doesn’t smell bad, there is not the incentive in that regard to reduce emissions. If we are going to convince people that CO2 from power plants has to be sequestered, we can’t honestly do it by telling them it will make their air smell better.

Well, actually, it is what is happening in the European Community where there is now the trading of emission credits. And, the same sort of cap-and-trade approach is what the U.S. did to reduce the problems of acid rain.

I don’t see the connection at all. It has nothing to do with planned economies. Countries are free to implement the reductions in emissions in any way they choose to…and so far, the countries seem to be implementing it through market forces like cap-and-trade programs.

But my point is that ISTM that environmental advocates are already doing both. It’s not that environmentalists are focusing exclusively on global warming and ignoring local environmental issues. (Maybe a few of them are, but AFAICT most greenies take the “think globally, act locally” slogan pretty seriously.)

The chief reason we still have a lot of smelly factories around is not that environmentalists have gone off to the anti-AGW rally and just forgotten about local activism, but because some people and communities benefit economically from smelly factories (at least in the short term). And because the people who own the smelly factories have considerable political power.

Well, you haven’t shown any evidence, AFAICT, that environmentalists are actually neglecting local and pocketbook approaches to environmental issues in favor of over-focusing on big-government AGW solutions. I don’t see why they shouldn’t continue to focus on both.

Sure, but as I said, what makes you think that environmentalists aren’t already taking advantage of the “shareholder-advocacy” approach? Stories like this one about shareholder activism are all over the green media. Believe me, when shareholder activists on environmental causes can boost their message with the lure of increased profits, they take full advantage of the opportunity.

And of course, the increased-profits incentive only works when the proposed strategy will increase profits in the short term. Companies are notoriously reluctant to adopt measures that will cut into their immediate profits, even if they’d end up making more money in the long term.

Again, I think you’re ignoring the fact that most environmentalists look at both the big view and the small view. Why shouldn’t they do both?

Cite?

I have no problem with your personally believing that it will prove impossible to regulate and/or marketize AGW emissions on a global level. But I have a problem with your categorically asserting it as fact, unsupported by actual evidence.

Ermm . . . no, they’re not, Quartz.

Excellent idea, and you’ll find it endorsed by a lot of professed liberals and/or environmentalists on the Dope and, for that matter, on Democratic Underground.

Environmental science in the early era of the field (1960s-1980s) was dominated by the study and policy implications of point-source pollution (e.g. a factory, a power plant.) by the late 1980s and 1990s, it became clear that not only were point-source pollution issues important, but so were non-point source pollution issues. A non-point source of pollution is pollution that arises from many smaller activities that may be transient in time and space (think large numbers of automobiles or trash heap fires.) To ignore non-point source pollution is to stick our heads in the sand with respect to the last couple decades of data and study.

This is an ineffective method in a global warming context because most of the greenhouse gases (CO[sub]2[/sub] and methane, for example) are odorless and colorless. In addition, their global warming effect is extremely unlikely to be noticed locally - only in the global aggregate will you detect the effects.

This is the sort of reasoning against which I’m arguing. Yes, they may be important; they may be more important than the point sources. But we can get started on the point sources.

I still don’t follow you. Non-point source pollution generais addressed by dealing with all the little tiny sources of pollution at once. For instance, individual automobiles emit CO2. They can be addressed by, variously, taxing cars in general, taxing engine size, taxing fuel, taxing carbon content of fuel, taxing average co2 emissions, mandating fuel efficiency, telling people to lay off using cars, subsidising alternative means of transport, subsidising alternative fuels, subsidising hybrid/electric cards, and probably a few other things. All the specific measures I listed are already in use somewhere or other, in fact I think the UK does everything on the list other than mandate fuel efficiency levels and set a specific carbon tax. Efforts are underway to address these non-point sources.

Similarly, it’s not exactly escaped notice that Drax power station pumped out nearly 23 million tonnes of CO2 last year, it’s just that no-one has come up with an affordable plan for replacing it just yet. However there are efforts underway to increase energy efficiency by phasing out incandescent light bulbs, improving home insulation, etc. which should reduce the need for electricity, and thereby at least reduce the need to keep building new Drax-a-likes.

So the issue is being tackled in a perfectly sensible, workmanlike way, apart from the fact that no-one can agree on how much its necessary to reduce emissions by, and how much its worth spending per tonne of CO2 to reduce them. And the main reason for that is that seems to be that people who either don’t believe in AGW, or don’t care about it, spend a huge amount of time and effort making sure the issue is tied up in "big, over-arching proposed agreements, multinational reports " etc. and persuading the public that reducing AGW would entail something “reminiscent of the old planned economies of the Soviet Bloc”, when it probably would not.

You misunderstand me - we have already started on the point sources.

Both are important.

I just realized that you wrote the above in response to this:

I don’t understand - you’re either arguing that both sources of pollution are not important, or against the general proposition that more than one factor can contribute to an effect. Either way, you are contradicting yourself:

The other possibility is that you misunderstood me to be saying that point sources of pollution aren’t important - something I clearly did not say. Please clarify what you mean - I just don’t get it.

Point source vs non-point source per se is just an example. The issue is dealing with something now, not coming up with yet another objection when a suggestion is made. Like HR people, think SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. The great ‘targets’ and plans that such as the IPCC invent fail significanty here.

Quartz, I’m not sure you understand the relationship of the IPCC to policy-making bodies. The IPCC is an advisory body and has no policy-making power. What “targets” and “plans” are you talking about here? Perhaps you object to the information they give to policy-makers (such as this report (PDF)?

Are you advocating that the IPCC be given policy-making powers?

Are you advocating that some plans should not have objections raised because something must be done now?

I don’t see that you have coherently advanced a particular suggestion in this thread. So far you have suggested that currently policy is too Soviet-like (a criticism often mistakenly directed at the Kyoto Protocol, which does not centralize control of greenhouse gas emission), suggested that attempts to limit greenhouse gases should be locally-based rather than international, and that looking at global climate change as a collection of small problems is better than looking at it as one big problem. How is any of this Specific, Measurable, Achieveable, Realistic, and Timely?
I’m not sure whether this debate is about a suggestion you have regarding something you think is not being done, or whether it’s about something that is being done that you object to.

Quartz, is this the sort of thing you meant?

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/energy_and_environment_/2007/06/the_giggle_test.php

No. Actually, a prime example was just shown in a TV ad: turning the thermostat down.

See? The environmentalists are already doing the activism that you’re advocating on small and local environmental issues.

You can stop fretting about the fact that environmentalists are also devoting some time to global environmental issues and large-scale initiatives. They’re not going to give up reminding you to turn down your thermostat.