Via Green, Inc:

The European Union has said it is prepared to raise its target for cutting greenhouse gases to 30 percent from 20 percent - but only if there are similar pledges to cut emissions from other countries in the industrialized world. In a report issued on Thursday, health and environment campaigners called on the EU to adopt the more ambitious target anyway, because it will lengthen European lives -- and save money.

Representatives from the Health and Environment Alliance, Climate Action Network Europe and WWF, say the higher target could generate additional health savings of 25 million euros each year by 2020, bringing the total annual savings to 76 billion euros.

The groups based the calculation on economic evaluations of how people will live longer and healthier lives by breathing cleaner air, how industry will make savings from reduced loss of working days, and how governments will benefit from reduced costs to health services.

They say the evidence comes from a large number of studies published over the last 20 years that show that sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and particulate matter from fossil fuel emissions are linked to higher rates of death and respiratory illnesses, including bronchitis and the exacerbation of asthma symptoms, and cardiac problems.

Climate change is a clear and present danger to residents of small island states. Via GoGreenTube.

Center for American Progress President John Podesta and UN Foundation President Timothy Wirth write a joint op-ed in the Denver Post today on the promise and challenge of remaking the energy economy through smart public policy.

The technologies we need to begin this economic transformation already exist today, and the dollars will flow if we just change the rules of the energy game, rules that have favored the old ways of doing business with tax breaks, regulatory incentives, and lip service to alternatives, and stop using the atmosphere as a garbage dump for our emissions. As a first step, we must cap our emissions and put a price on carbon. The investments that will result from this decision will be a powerful stimulus for economic growth, competitive advantage, and new jobs -- good jobs in manufacturing, installation, and research, entry-level jobs and high-wage jobs alike.

[snip]

The Democratic Party platform recognizes the energy opportunity in its section on "Investing in American Competitiveness" -- but it does not go far enough. The size and urgency of this task require a president willing to make it the top domestic priority in the White House -- not pigeonholed as an energy initiative or environmental initiative or even as a security initiative, but made the centerpiece of his economic agenda. Indeed, it will demand that the president refocus the mission and responsibility of all relevant government agencies and convene them in a new National Energy Council in the White House.

The success of this year's candidates and next year's elected leaders will rise and fall on how they address the energy issue. Those who convey the scale and scope -- and opportunity -- of transforming our energy economy will succeed.

In which I speak with Jim Murphy, a British member of parliament, the UK Minster for Europe and UK Minister for Public Diplomacy--and blogger. In the conversation below, we discuss Minister Murphy's new book on public diplomacy, his take on the climate change debate in the United States, the Lisbon Treaty, and the prospect of Turkish ascension into the European Union.

There's a great piece on RH Reality Check today on the fact that while global climate change is, at long last, getting the attention it deserves, there needs to be more focus on how women are being disproportionately affected - particularly in low-income countries.

While studies have shown that natural disasters shorten women's life expectancy significantly more than men's as well as contribute to reproductive and maternal health problems, there are also inequalities in everyday life experiences resulting from climate change:

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that women produce 60-80 percent of food grown in the developing world -- often small scale crops critical to their family's sustenance. Women and girls are responsible for collecting and carrying water -- a time consuming and physically demanding task in places where wells are not easily accessible. In some places, this work takes hours each day, and as communities cope with the effects of changes in climate, demands on women's time and workloads are likely to increase.

The piece raises up a lot of questions to be answered, and a few potential ways to improve women's status during global climate change, like giving them more decision-making power in disaster prevention and preparedness programs and disaster recovery operations and increasing female participation in national talks about climate change. The author says it best:

The world needs more women-centered research and strategies for climate change adaptation, and the world's large emitters must shoulder the responsibility for their impacts on the world's poorest populations in order to see a world that is more equitable, healthy, able to prevent catastrophic climate change, and to adapt to its impacts.

WWF has released its G8 climate report cards (PDF) in the run-up to the G8 summit in Japan, and mom and dad will not be happy when they see the U.S. score. The United States is at the bottom of the class, followed by Canada and Russia, each of which seemed to have copied off of the U.S.'s paper. Here is a summary of the teacher's comments on the U.S. grades:

The United States score the worst of all G8 countries,being the largest emitter with the highest per capita emissions and an increasing trend in total emissions. At the same time the US have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. While substantial activities emerge at the state level, little substantive federal measures are in place to curb emissions in the short term.

Germany, France and the U.K. finished at the top of this class, but even they got a warning from the teacher that their grades could start slipping if they're not careful. Italy and Japan round out the middle of the bell curve.

Unfortunately, the class was graded on a curve, so even though Germany, France and the U.K. have high marks in emissions per GDP, they're failing in transport and struggling in past emissions trends (1990-2006) and Kyoto targets.

The U.S. is failing every subject except emissions per GDP, and even that's not a good grade. Canada, on the other hand, is failing all but CO2 per KWh of electricity, though that grade is actually pretty good.

Hopefully, the G8 summit will function as a study group, and the class can get together to try and improve their grades. If they fail, I'm afraid repeating will not be an option.

(Image from kolnkgin.com)

A New York Times article discusses the Bush Administration's intentional disregard of advice from the Environmental Protection Agency. In this case, the White House refused to open an email reporting on whether or not greenhouse gases are dangerous to the environment or health. In response, the EPA watered down the report.

The original idea was that if greenhouse gases were ruled to be a danger, they could be regulated under existing environmental laws like the Clean Air Act. This, said the chairman of the President's Council on Environmental Quality, could result in a "train wreck" of piecemeal regulation. The EPA's report apparently did not agree with this policy, so the Administration placed its fingers squarely in its ears, tightly shut its eyes, and waited for the report to dilute itself.

This is not the first time the White House has ignored the advice of the EPA and the EPA has rolled over. A similar situation arose when the EPA decided not to let California set tougher emissions standards for vehicles. In that case, the EPA administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, overturned the unanimous decision of his staff, who wanted to allow the California regulations, and said that global, not regional policies are the best way to resolve the problem. This decision came after Johnson had closed door discussions with White House officials, and documents on what led to this decision have been shielded from oversight efforts by "executive privilege."

I've heard that sometimes if you ignore something it will go away. I guess I never realized how true that is.

The UN Dispatch - Grist collaboration concludes today with discussion of an idea submitted by On Day One userJames Hansen--yes that Dr. James Hansen!

Tony Kreindler of the Environmental Defense Fund; Nigel Purvis; Kate Sheppard; Timothy B. Hurstand David Roberts respond below the fold.

Tony Kreindler, media director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund

As usual, great issues raised here by Dr. Jim Hansen, whose outspoken leadership on climate change has been instrumental in raising public awareness and creating the opportunity we have now to craft effective solutions at the federal level.

We're clearly not going to fix global warming without addressing the market failure at the very root of the problem -- the lack of a price tag on dumping carbon pollution into the atmosphere. So a carbon tax on first blush may seem like a sensible way to go, according to basic economics: if you tax something, you get less of it, so we should tax carbon.

But the litmus test of an effective climate policy is not whether it achieves some carbon emissions reductions and drives investment in energy efficiency. The test has to be whether it reduces carbon emissions far enough and fast enough to ward off the serious consequences of runaway global warming. From that perspective, a carbon tax has a basic drawback: it may get you some emissions reductions, but it leaves the amount of reductions up in the air -- literally.

No one knows where to set a carbon tax to drive sufficient pollution cuts, and the political pressure in the U.S. Congress (not to mention a general aversion to taxes) will always be to drive that price down. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, we simply can't afford guesswork that will inevitably be muddied by politics.

What we do know is how far we need to reduce emissions to help avoid the worst climate outcomes. That's why a mandatory cap on emissions, coupled with an emissions trading market, is a better approach: it sets a legal limit on pollution to ensure that greenhouse gas concentrations don't reach dangerously high levels in the atmosphere. Emissions trading helps ensure that we meet that cap at the lowest cost - by putting companies and private-sector investment in the hunt for the broadest pool of pollution reduction options across the economy.

That promises to make the renewable energy electricity system advocated by Dr. Hansen about much more than just wind and solar (though we hope they play a huge role). It will also be about innovative new technologies like fuel brewed from yeast, advanced geothermal, and energy harvested from the waves of the sea. Cap and trade establishes a low-carbon playing field that lets them compete. You can get a sneak peek at some of those technologies in a series of short videos from my EDF colleague Miriam Horn.

Nigel Purvis

Dr. Hansen is right that we do need to move as quickly as possible toward renewable energy, understanding that the transition will take decades even under the best circumstances. Government policy holds the key to speeding that transformation of the global economy. Carbon taxes are working in some countries and theoretically might be effective in the United States. The key to success, of course, is urgent action. We are most likely to see action in the United States through a cap-and-trade system, which already has considerable support from industry, environmentalists and many members of Congress. Cap-and-trade is not perfect (although it has some important advantages as Tony noted) but it's the only approach that is seriously in play. The worse thing would be to lose another decade holding out for a better policy framework.

Kate Sheppard

Hansen isn't alone in calling for a carbon tax -- Al Gore and other notables in the climate community have called for it. Heck, even John Dingell, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, says that "a carbon tax would be the most efficient way of dealing with global warming." It probably is the most efficient way of dealing with it, but as Tony points out, efficiency and effectiveness don't necessarily win the day with the public in this debate over how to deal with climate change. We live in a country founded largely in protest of taxes, and the aversion remains strong. I don't think anything that involves the word "tax" would fly at this point in time. During the debate of the Climate Security Act earlier this month, Republicans called the bill the "Boxer Carbon Tax" in an effort to malign it. I think that some sort of cap-and-trade scheme is the best option that stands a chance at this point.

But Hansen has a great point about how to gain public support, and how to do this most effectively, in advocating for a return of all the revenues to the public. Tax-and-dividend, or cap-and-dividend, is likely to fare much better with Republican politicians and the public in general. It also takes away the Republican argument that climate legislation is meant to be a new, giant money-suck for government-happy Democrats. Though I may personally favor using a portion of the revenues to invest in technology R&D and green jobs programs, this would probably make legislation more appealing to the general public.

And clearly Hansen's idea that the next president should call for a completely renewable energy electrical system is great. Setting a price on carbon would correct the market in order to make that possible.

David Roberts

I largely agree with Tony on the cap-and-trade vs. carbon tax question. That debate has taken on a very strange character -- everyone from economists to social justice advocates talks about a carbon tax in reverent tones, as though it's a Blu Ray DVD player while a cap-and-trade system is a Betamax VCR (you younger readers can ask your parents about that one). But it's not exactly fair to compare a real-world cap-and-trade system (like the one in the EU, which admittedly had a very rough start) with the Platonic ideal of a carbon tax as sketched on Greg Mankiw's whiteboard. In the real world, as Tony says, it's just as easy for a tax to be complex and unwieldy, once the lobbyists fill it with loopholes and exemptions. Most of all though, a well-crafted cap-and-trade system gets you certainty on emission reductions, which is the overriding priority here.

That said, if you want to drive a large-scale, short-term shift to efficiency and renewables -- as Hansen does, and I do -- it's important to realize that federal carbon-pricing is only one piece of the policy puzzle, and not even necessarily the most important piece. You also need a large, sustained program of public investment, along with complimentary regulations and regulatory reform.

On the investment front, we need to plow a lot of money into infrastructure, particularly public transit, a smarter electrical grid, and improved water systems. We need to raise our R&D spending tenfold. We need to use the government's full purchasing power to expand markets for new green products and technologies. And we need investment to help seed and nurture nascent industries.

On the regulatory front -- which is boring to talk about, I realize, but vitally important -- we need to fix the perverse regulatory scheme that governs our electricity sector and biases utilities in favor of large central generation plants (which is why they all love nuclear and "clean coal"). We need to radically raise our efficiency standards for buildings, which is where most of the easiest, cheapest reductions can be found. We also need higher efficiency standards on everything from industrial boilers to vehicles to appliances.

And -- tipping my hat to the illustrious Dr. Hansen -- we need an immediate moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. That's the biggest prize in the short term, and if anyone's reading this wondering where they should direct their energy, direct it here. No new coal!

Timothy B. Hurst

First, I would like to extend my thanks to Grist, On Day One, UN Dispatch, and all of those who have weighed in on this important project all week. We must understand this whole experiment not just as a thought exercise, but rather as a potential conduit to our elected officials. One of the critical tenets of agenda setting is problem definition and associating the proper frame with that problem - this project is already well on the road to doing that. Another critical component in setting the agenda will be to ensure that the properly framed problem and its concomitant solutions reach our policymakers with the kind of broad-based support needed to affect substantive policy change - and that's next.

Broadly speaking I think Dr. Hansen's suggestions are excellent ones, and I will address them separately. First, the suggestion that we need to move to a "national low-loss electric grid" powered solely by renewable energy sources is a useful one. But considering the incrementalism that is built into our government structure, not to mention the fact that a national grid infrastructure and our multi-layered federalism go together like oil and water, we may not be able to do so within the ten years that Dr. Hansen suggests - but that certainly doesn't mean he shouldn't suggest it. We need urgent action now to simply maintain the kind of investments in renewable energy that will ensure its continued growth. Whether that action comes in the form of investment tax credits, production tax credits, feed-in tariffs, carbon credits, a carbon-tax, or some combination thereof, "the key to success...is urgent action," as Nigel rightly suggests.

Like Dr. Hansen, I am a big proponent of a carbon tax. The cap and trade mechanism (especially ones with soft limits and ten-year phase-ins), would not provide the type of certainty that Tony suggests when he writes, "No one knows where to set a carbon tax to drive sufficient pollution cuts...". One only needs to look at Europe to see the 'effectiveness' of their carbon cap and trade program. I am not opposed to a cap and trade outright, as one was successfully built and implemented to address acid rain. We may even be able to learn from the mistakes made in the European model. But there is just as much "guesswork" involved in formulating a cap and trade as any other carbon policy.

Yes, Americans have an aversion to taxes. But, might that aversion be lessened if a carbon tax replaced personal income tax? A carbon tax would not stifle our economy, it would actually stimulate it. We need to take ownership of this issue and stop letting nay-sayers win the framing battle by continually allowing them to play the economic trump card. Environmental protection and economic vitality are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, transitioning to a revenue stream fed by carbon taxes as opposed to income taxes would require a complete restructuring of our tax code as we know it, something few want to do. But we might be beyond the point of choosing the easy path.

The European Union is again flexing its market muscle to force improvements in environmental regulation. This time, the E.U. has decided to cap emissions from aircraft--and not just European aircraft. Under the agreement starting in 2012, all airlines coming or going in European airports will have to buy pollution credits. The credits are managed under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, the largest cap-and-trade program in the world.

The boldness of this move cannot be understated. Airline associations are fuming, as they are already dealing with rising fuel costs and sketchy profit margins. The United States has been vehemently against the measure, and has recently knocked down attempts at establishing its own emissions regulation framework.

The E.U. has said though, that it would consider waiving the credits for airlines covered under similar emissions reduction policies, to avoid double regulation. In this sense, they are encouraging countries to develop their own policies to avoid having to submit to European regulation.

This step also begins to address one of the biggest deficiencies of the Kyoto agreement. Kyoto does not cover air travel, which is one of the fastest growing sources of emissions in the world.

So again, as with chemical regulation, the E.U. is taking a leadership position on environmental issues, and using its market power to force the rest of the world into compliance. Until there are some strong, effective international regimes to manage the global commons, or some real leadership on the part of the United States, I would expect to hear more in the future about the "Europe Effect," and the U.S. had better get used to being a follower.

Cross-Posted to On Day One

(Image from Treehugger)

Our collaboration with Grist rolls on today with a discussion prompt submitted by On Day One user teiki:

A key to the massive use of fossil fuels in the U.S. is gross overconsumption. We use way more than necessary, through a combined dependence on the automobile and an infatuation with big, gas-hungry cars, trucks and SUVs., through wasted energy consumption in our homes and offices in everything from their construction to "phantom loads" and light bulbs, and through the amount of green house gas emitted by livestock supplying an overconsumption of food. We must learn to use less.

David Roberts

I think you need to be really careful on this one. There's no benefit in framing over-consumption as an issue of American greed or gluttony. If you come out preaching about sin, trying to make people feel guilty and repent, you play to stereotype, get mired in a culture war, and quickly end up preaching only to the choir.

It is true, via accidents of history, economy, and geography, that Americans have incredibly high per capita resource consumption. We're an extraordinarily rich country with lots of land and access to cheap energy, so we've designed our material environment somewhat thoughtlessly. When things are cheap, they get used in heedless ways. It's not a moral defect, it's just human nature.

Now those things are getting expensive, and the damage they're doing to the environment is unavoidable, so it's time to address high per-capita consumption. There are two ways to do it. One is through voluntary reduction in quality of life -- give up vacations, turn the thermostat down, live in a smaller house or apartment. The other is to get more out of each unit of input, maintaining quality of life while driving down net resource consumption. In other words: sacrifice or efficiency.

Pushing the first will get you blowback and very little net gain, in my humble opinion. The second is a gold mine. People don't really understand yet that quality of life and resource consumption are not tightly linked. Plenty of European countries -- and California! -- have per capita consumption lower than the American average and quality of life just as high. With concerted effort, we could slash our resource consumption dramatically and still be perfectly comfortable.

Now, as an addendum: there are plenty of behavior changes I'd like to encourage -- riding bikes, living in dense, walkable cities, growing food or joining a community supported agriculture program, etc. But I don't think of those things as sacrifice, or as "less." They are more: more exercise, more community, more health. The point to make to Americans is that we can improve our quality of life and reduce our ecological footprint simultaneously. Nobody has to shiver in the dark.

Tony Kreindler, media director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund

I'm with David: the best way to look at energy efficiency is not as a reduction, but as an increase in supply. It's a new source of power all by itself.

It's also one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to begin reducing global warming pollution, particularly in one of the sectors highlighted here - residential and commercial buildings.

Greenhouse gas emissions (mostly CO2) from buildings and the appliances in them are expected to rise by roughly 50 percent by 2030. But according to the consulting firm McKinsey & Company the sector offers significant low-cost opportunities to reduce consumption and pollution, primarily because residential and commercial buildings are relatively inefficient, and projected growth provides a lot of opportunities to build in efficient technologies during initial construction (which is cheaper than retrofitting).

McKinsey says pursuing efficiency options in the sector could reduce emissions by 710 megatons to as much as 870 megatons by 2030 - the largest pool of "negative-cost" reduction opportunities among the options it looked at across the economy. Among them are advanced lighting, increased efficiency and reduced stand-by loss in electronics, more efficient HVAC equipment, combined heat and power, building shells, and improved residential water heaters.

But McKinsey also warns that the longer we wait to put the right policies in place, and from EDF's perspective that's a mandatory national cap on greenhouse gas pollution, the more of those low-cost options will slip away. They are "time perishable."

Timothy B. Hurst

I second Dave's response, especially his critique of environmental prostelytizing. Being preachy fuels the fires of resentment towards environmentalists - they come off as elitist. It would be absurd to bad-mouth consumption altogether. A strictly anti-materialist position does not work: the fact of the matter is, people need things. I also support Dave's effort to reframe individual environmental behavior as smart rather than sacrificial. As my colleague Licia Peck, a PhD student in politics at UC Santa Cruz says, "environmental sacrifice isn't."

Dave frames the possible remedies for American over-consumption as improvements in efficiency and changes in individual behavior. All I would like to add is that there is an important third consideration that these solutions do not adequately address; distribution. Regardless of how much we tout making green choices and improvements in efficiency, vast economic disparities also explain global patterns of resource (mis)use.

Our collaboration with Grist continues today with a discussion of the top user-rated idea on On Day One: 'Eat the View,' by Roger Doiron . This idea was so popular, it even found its way into the the New York Times.

Here is what he suggests:

Announce plans for a food garden on the White House lawn, making one of the White House's eight gardeners responsible for it, with part of produce going to the White House kitchen and the rest to a local food pantry. The White House is "America's House" and should set an example. The new President would not be breaking with tradition, but returning to it (the White House has had vegetable gardens before) and showing how we can meet global challenges such as climate change and food security.

Kate Sheppard

Wow, I had no idea that the White House had eight gardeners. The yard isn't even that big ... it seems like one could work on a vegetable garden. I like this idea because it's not something totally new -- the White House used to have a vegetable garden. It might be nice messaging to the public that we haven't always lived in a world with a globalized food stream, a place where you can get bananas from Nicaragua cheaper than you can apples from Washington. It would be nice if this were something that people visited on their tours of the White House, and if it were used as a conversation starter about local foods and their benefit for planetary and personal health.

I like what the questioner had to say in the Times article: "This would not be a quaint little garden for the White House chef. I have something fairly ambitious in mind, that would make a powerful political statement -- a garden large enough to cover most of what the White House needs, with an overflow to a local food pantry."

I grew up on a family farm, so local, fresh food is something I think that more people should have greater opportunity to access. Unfortunately, many people don't have that privilege. I don't have any expectations that everyone in the country (or many, for that matter) are going to go out and start their own garden just because the White House has one. I think that idea seems a little too quaint for most Americans. This is part of the reason I like the way the questioner frames it. This shouldn't be about a quaint little garden patch, but about a real demonstration that our food source is important, and growing local is possible. I also like the idea of giving a portion to a local food bank -- I think it's important that we link this climate and food initiative to greater ideas about public service, justice, community building, and responsibility to those around us.

David Roberts

This really is a fantastic idea, on a number of levels.

First of all, lawns are an environmental nightmare. Lawns are America's single largest irrigated crop. They cover over 49,000 square miles, three times the area covered by corn, the next biggest crop. (By contrast, concentrated solar power plants covering an area 1/6 that size could provide 100% of U.S. electricity.) They drink up between 30 and 60 percent of urban freshwater and are doused with more than $5 billion in fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and $700 million in synthetic pesticides a year (numbers as of 1993; hard to find anything more recent, but we can assume those numbers have gotten much larger via the housing boom). Most of the water and fertilizers are wasted through poor doseage and timing; both wash into overburdened sewage systems. America's lawnmowers burn 800 million gallons (and spill more than an Exxon Valdez's worth) of gas a year in horribly inefficient engines, producing up to 5% of total U.S. air pollution.

So anything that can replace lawns -- drought resistant landscaping, stones or gravel, or, yes, a food garden -- is a blessing. For the White House to explicitly reject lawn would be epochal.

Secondly, as Kate said, it could be a great model for how to produce local, organic, fresh food. There's enough space on the White House grounds to generate quite a bit; it could be used to feed the staff, visiting heads of state, or best of all, visitors. Imagine if the wide, sterile, and now unused road in front of the White House hosted a farmers market where food grown on the grounds was sold to tourists. Dreamy.

And while we're dreaming, why don't we put those solar panels back up on the roof from whence Reagan tore them down? And let's throw a green roof up there while we're at it. Might as well do a full efficiency retrofit too. Oh hell, just take it off grid!

I'm told someone applying to live there wants to bring us change we can believe in. Well, Ghandi said you should be the change you hope for in the world. Show, don't tell.

Timothy B. Hurst

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must say that I am an avid vegetable gardener, and have maintained one, or helped to maintain one, for pretty much my entire life (excluding the seven years I lived at 10,000 ft above sea level). The garden is where I go in the morning, and on breaks from reading and writing about environmental politics throughout the day. It is an unbelievable way to focus my thoughts about the serious environmental issues of today that often get lost and scrambled from hours of staring at this very computer screen. I am not saying that our next president should be spending hours on his hands and knees pulling stubborn bindweed from the strawberry patch, but the image of a garden on the White House lawn, and the image of a President in that garden could do unbelievable things for home-gardening, community gardens, family and neighborhood cohesiveness, economic well-being, and our collective health.

Presidents have always been able to incorporate their various fits of decorative and recreational whimsy into the Pennsylvania Avenue address. Thomas Jefferson's water closets he built in the upper floor to replace the outdoor privy. Jefferson also created a wilderness museum in the Entrance Hall, with mounted animals and Indian artifacts.

Bowling lanes were first built in the White House as a birthday gift for President Truman in 1947. As it turned out, Truman didn't care for bowling himself, but allowed staff to start a league. But in 1969, President and Mrs. Nixon, both avid bowlers, had a new one-lane bowling alley built.

There have also been theaters built, basketball courts created, horseshoe pits dug, and the avid swimmer President Ford installed a swimming pool. But much like the solar panels Jimmy Carter had installed on the roof of the White House (which were later torn down by Ronald Reagan within months of his moving into the residence), a vegetable garden on the grounds of the White House could make the type of political statement that the other recreational additions could not.

Our week long collaboration with Grist rolls on today with a discussion prompted by On Day One user taylorshelton who suggests government subsidies for non-renewable energy should be eliminated.

Eliminate all subsidies for traditional fuels (coal, oil and nuclear) and invest all energy-related funds into renewable energy resources like solar, wind and cellulosic ethanol with the goal of completely eliminating dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Nigel Purvis, President, Climate Advisers

Phasing out subsidies for climate damaging technologies is good, common sense. The challenge is mostly political -- powerful industries, labor unions and other interest groups defend these subsidies whenever they are challenged. Because the benefits of subsidies are concentrated and the costs are not, subsidy recipients are usually more organized and effective in the political process than ordinary tax payers. Two things will make a difference. First, alternative economic opportunities are needed in places like West Virginia and Kentucky to help local communities thrive in a more climate-friendly economy. That is one reason why public funding for R&D for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies for coal-fired electricity production makes sense. CCS turns climate action into a fight against dirty coal not against coal-dependent communities. Second, the broader electorate needs to be mobilized to overcome the special interests. Will Al Gore's 'we' campaign make a difference? It is too early to say. But it's hard to see a fundamental shift in U.S. energy policy without a fundamental shift in voter attitudes and behavior.

Kate Sheppard

I'm with Nigel; this proposal makes a lot of sense. But of course, their are large political obstacles. Lobbyists for wind, solar and other renewables don't have nearly the power on the Hill that the fossil fuel industries have, nor does the climate movement have the same wealth of, er, wealth to flood to politicians to encourage them to support a change like this. It would be a tough fight to get these subsidies simply shifted to renewables though; many politicians would balk at the idea of "favoring" these new sources of energy rather than just "letting the market decide." Which is, of course, a crock of crap since we've been gaming "the market" for all these years to privilege fossil fuel industries. It would probably be an easier sell to invest these funds in research and development of new technologies rather than subsidies.

He makes another good point about the need to help communities that would have some hardship during this transition. I'm not as much a fan of massive government investment in CCS, since I think coal is a dirty fuel source from start to finish -- not just in the burning of it. Rather, we should be investing in worker transition and new green jobs programs in industries that are actually green.

David Roberts

As Nigel and Kate have said, this idea has always had immense intuitive appeal, but it turns out to be one of the most devilishly difficult things to do in the real world of American politics. Attempts to shift a modest amount of subsidies from oil to renewables were blocked in the Senate no fewer than four times just this last session (with, ahem, John McCain joining the Republican obstructionists).

This is true for all the reasons already described by Nigel and Kate. And for another thing, no one can agree just how much subsidy fossil fuels get. Direct payments are often the least of it. There's sweetheart deals on royalties, lax enforcement of environmental regulations, regulatory biases against efficiency and distributed power, longstanding political insider influence, and on and on. Is the military budget a subsidy for oil? In some sense it is, but it's not clear how to quantify it, or how exactly to shift it.

Ultimately, while fossil subsidies are egregious, they are far less significant than the global macroeconomic forces we now see at work: skyrocketing demand, inexorably tightening supply, and the rise in commodity and construction costs. It is these forces that will squeeze fossil fuels and drive the shift to efficiency and renewables. Subsidies can delay and gum up that process, make it less speedy and equitable than it would otherwise be, but they can't stop it.

So the goal should not be a clean, rational appropriations process (or a unicorn). The goal should be to give renewables and efficiency enough of a boost to get them rolling. Once they're providing the jobs, the power, and the revenue, legislators will be far less likely to cling to fossil subsidies. Greens are fond of saying that the era of whale oil didn't end because we ran out of whale oil. It didn't end because we removed whale oil subsidies either. Everything hinges on the rise of robust, viable alternatives.

Timothy B. Hurst, Red Green and Blue, EcoPolitology

I agree with Nigel, Kate, and Dave that eliminating tax breaks to the "traditional" energy industries and transferring those breaks to the renewable energy industry sounds good on paper, but would be politically difficult, to say the very least. Dave raises the excellent point that it would be difficult to rescind those tax breaks because we are not exactly sure how much they get in the first place; calculating the total amount of subsidies that go to the 'traditional' sources of fuel is no easy task. Estimates of our subsidies to fossil fuel companies alone range from $15 - $35 billion annually. Throw in the $100 billion we have subsidized the nuclear industry over the last half century and we are talking about a whole lot of money in direct and indirect subsidy payments to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries.

In stead of completely stripping our subsidies to the fossil fuel and nuclear industry, which the others rightly argued would be a political nightmare, perhaps we could analyze how those payments actually take place and make the necessary adjustments to free up revenue for cleaner energy sources. Certain subsidies could potentially be completely eliminated from the mix if lawmakers can frame those payments as the wasteful government handouts they are. Why should the government assume the legal risks of exploration and development (in stead of the private corporation doing so)? Why do we grant below-cost loans with lax repayment terms? Is it really necessary that we grant income tax breaks, sales tax breaks and low-interest construction bonds to corporations that are continually reporting record profits?

With that said, all subsidies are not inherently evil (government-sponsored R&D programs, in particular, might be one type that we might be bet better off leaving alone). But the longer they exist, the more likely it is they become codified into our tax structure, and the harder they are to take away. If a tax break is on the books for long enough, removing that tax break is then framed by its supporters as a "tax increase" that would "cripple our economy and threaten our prosperity." Recent debates in our Congress have shown this very phenomenon in action. If we are to make any substantive change in our energy subsidy programs, we need to approach it not as an 'either-or' proposition, but rather as an exercise in pragmatic, rational, and fair budgeting.

James Hansen blamed humans for global warming before it was popular.

20 years ago, this NASA scientist sounded the alarm on climate change in a hearing convened by then Senator Tim Wirth, now President of the United Nations Foundation. The UN Foundation today, along with Worldwatch Institute, hosted Hansen as he talked to more than 300 people at the National Press Club about that fateful summer of '88.

Since those days, terms like "global warming" and "greenhouse gas" have made their way into everyday discussions on the topic alongside more politically charged terms like "alarmist" and "denier." These days you would have to live on Mars to have not heard of Al Gore and his now famous slideshow, while he and the IPCC have won one of the most coveted prizes on the planet for their work on the issue. Writers and bloggers have sprung up across the world offering ideas and information on the state of climate science and policy. As an issue, it has clearly come a long way in the public consciousness over the past 20 years.

But other than the fact that Belinda Carlisle is no longer a mainstay on the charts, how much has really changed since 1988?

Hansen, in an interview today with Diane Rehm, laments the overall lack of action by policymakers in the 20 years since the hearing. He notes that the debate continues to be confused by groups of what he calls "contrarians" who try to cast doubt on the science of climate change. Energy still comes predominantly from fossil fuel burning, cars continue to be the main form of transportation for most Americans, and policies to regulate carbon still can't seem to get off the ground. In the meantime, a few of the world's most populous countries are following development models that allow them fabulous growth at tremendous environmental expense, continually altering the composition of the atmosphere in perilous ways.

It looks like the biggest change since 1988 is the climate. Extreme weather is becoming more and more frequent and increasingly severe. Summer arctic sea ice could soon be gone. Many predictions of climate scientists have come true sooner than expected, and Hansen warns that some tipping points have already been reached, with others not far away. It is more than disconcerting that the climate is apparently changing faster than society.

It is important, however, to avoid falling into the abyss of hopelessness and despair, as there has indeed been some positive change. To begin with, most now believe that the climate is changing and that humans are responsible, and the debate has shifted toward how to manage the problem. Mitigation and adaptation solutions are weighed against one another, and scientific debates focus more on how and when the climate will change rather than whether or not it will at all. Most of those who took the "wait and see" approach have now seen. Waiting is thus no longer a reasonable option.

In the interview, Hansen offers a more or less realistic prescription for improving the state of affairs. He cites the employment of carbon capture and sequestration technology (CCS) and improved agricultural techniques as good starting points for change. Not to mention the potential of renewable sources like wind, solar, geothermal and the myriad other ways to make energy production more sustainable.

If there is an overall lack of progress in reducing emissions, policymakers are certainly partially to blame, but the private sector has also in many cases refused to be forward-looking. My favorite point that Hansen hits on in the Diane Rehm interview is that energy companies need to become energy companies, not fossil fuel companies. That is an interesting concept that I think should be more broadly echoed. Many often bemoan "big oil" for the benefit it reaps at others' expense, but it often goes forgotten that these are energy companies who could reap benefits from improving energy infrastructure, if only they were able to make the great leap out of the industrial revolution.

It took 20 years to conclude the debate, and there may not be another 20 years to spend figuring out how to proceed from there. Since 1988, many things once thought to be great have gone by the wayside. Like legwarmers and big hair, burning fossil fuels for energy must also become the relic of a bygone age. Besides, fossil fuels are so 19th century.

This week marks the twentieth anniversary of NASA Scientist James Hansen's groundbreaking Congressional testimony on global warming, an event that put climate change squarely on the political agenda. In honor of the anniversary, UN Dispatch, On Day One, and Grist are partnering to discuss ideas the next president can adopt to take on climate change. We are joined by a panel of experts who will weigh in on ideas submitted to On Day One by everyday users concerned about the climate crisis.

Our first idea comes from On Day One user wise old owl, who suggests we decentralize energy production.

Decentralized energy production through use of renewables (roof-top solar as well as solar farms, together with geothermal, tidal, and wind) can be transferred across our national grid to areas where it is needed from areas with higher productivity and/or lower need, which would change on a dynamic basis. This would eliminate centralized generating facilities as "targets" for terrorists, and eliminate the "control mentality" of large, centralized for-profit utilities.

Kate Sheppard

This strikes me as important, because this is one of the ideas that people could start working on without the federal government. The ability to connect to the grid and sell energy back to your local supplier is based on state and local laws, primarily. I know in New Jersey there are farmers along the Delaware Bay, which has great wind capacity (and doesn't have the prized "views" that folks along the Atlantic Coast are worried about impairing), who would love to build wind turbines and start selling back to the grid, but they're prevented by state laws. It's not only a tremendous opportunity to become energy independent and curb emissions, but it's also an economic opportunity for individuals and small businesses. This is something that folks should be lobbying for on the local and state level now, which would help create more pressure to do the things nationally that would need to be done to make this happen.

But then, of course, there's the bigger problem of revamping the grid to make this possible. Oilman-turned-clean-energy-evangelist T. Boone Pickens was on the Hill just last week testifying about how the country's transmission problems are preventing wind from becoming a major source of power. Pickens is attempting to build the world's largest wind farm in Texas. Right now though, it would be impossible to get solar energy from Arizona to Seattle, or wind energy from Texas to the surrounding states. It would require a a lot of new transmission lines, and that would probably take a significant amount of public investment at this point. Some states, like Texas, have already started adding and expanding transmission lines, but there really needs to be a national effort in order to connect all these localities.

On the federal level, though, another major hindrance right now is the lack of stability in the renewable industries, because Congress has failed to pass tax credit extensions multiple times now. There's a $54 billion tax package hanging in the balance in Congress right now that would extend tax breaks for renewable energy that are set to expire at the end of this year. This includes a six-year extension of the investment tax credit for solar energy; a three-year extension of the production tax credit for biomass, geothermal, hydropower, landfill gas, and solid waste; and a one-year extension of the production tax credit for wind energy. There are also incentives for the production of renewable fuels such as biodiesel and cellulosic biofuels, incentives for companies that produce energy-efficient products, and incentives to improve efficiency in commercial and residential buildings. The House has passed the package repeatedly, but it's failed in the Senate six times now.

Folks in the renewables industry are starting to get nervous as we near the expiration of those credits at the end of this year, and I've talked to people who work with trade organizations that represent renewable-energy firms on the Hill who say they're already seeing a slowing of growth in the sector because companies are hesitant to start new projects without the assurance that these credits will be available. Passing those credits now would be a significant step toward decentralizing energy

Nigel Purvis, President of Climate Advisers

Opening and expanding the grid to promote green competition makes a lot of sense. Of course, we also need to find ways to ensure that the companies that paid for today's grid recoup their investment in a green energy future. One way to do this would be to create financial incentives for today's utilities to improve the energy efficiency of their customer's homes, schools, factories and office buildings, as Duke Power CEO Jim Rogers has proposed. The cleanest power plant is the one that doesn't have to be built. And greater investment in energy efficiency would increase incomes and economic growth, making it one of the clearest 'no regrets' climate change solutions.

David Roberts

I think large, central-generation power plants are on the wane, for reasons as much economic as environmental. The cost of power plants has been spiking and there's been a concomitant surge in interest in smaller, faster, lower-risk investment options. There's big private money flooding into this area and orders of magnitude more ready to go pending the lowering of a few barriers.

Keep in mind that there are two kinds of decentralized energy. One is solar panels, small wind turbines, combined heat and power systems, geothermal heat pumps, and other sources of energy that can be owned and operated by communities, business, or individuals. The other is utility-scale renewable power farms, mostly wind and concentrated solar (CSP). These are large and centralized insofar as they clustered together, but they are decentralized in that they are made up of multiple independent units. They are, in the jargon, modular.

Both have their merits -- 207 merits, according to Amory Lovins. A system based on some mix of the two would get you graceful failure (individual units can go out without imperiling overall supply), safety (it's difficult for terrorists or natural disasters to take out power plants that are spread out), dispatchability (it's almost always windy or sunny somewhere in a large geographical area), and speed (units are smaller and cheaper and thus can be built more quickly).

As in so many cases, what's needed is a combination of regulatory reform and investment. Right now electricity sector regulations are heavily biased in favor of central plants, for reasons varied and painfully wonky. In terms of investment, we need to put far, far more public money into clean energy R&D, and we need to get serious about infrastructure, particularly building a smart grid that can intelligently coordinate distributed resources. We also need innovative funding mechanisms (like Berkley, Calif.'s rooftop solar program or Shai Agassi's Project Better Place in Israel) to overcome the primary barrier to deployment, which is high upfront capital costs.

Just to end with a metaphor: the move from central to decentralized power will mirror the move from mainframes to desktop PCs. The democratization of computing power not only made IT cheaper, it is helping invigorate democracy itself as citizens learn to talk, learn, and work together directly, without intermediaries. Thus has come a flood of innovations and serendipities we never could have predicted in advance. Another flood will come with the decentralization of power.

Timothy B. Hurst, Red Green and Blue and EcoPolitology

The biggest obstacle to decentralizing our system of electricity generation and transmission has been, and will continue to be, the institutional structures working to keep it centralized. For us to transition to a system that favors decentralized or "distributed" generation, we would need substantive changes in policies at the local, state, and federal levels -- not to mention cultural shifts at the utilities themselves.

Thus far, the favored policy mechanisms for developing renewable energy in this country have been tax credits, and more recently at the state level, renewables portfolio standards (RPS). But the problem is that federal investment tax credits for renewable energy (ITCs), and production tax credits (PTCs) have not provided the steady, long term investment security that is needed to make renewable energy a substantial portion of our electricity mix.

Instead, the one and two year extensions of the tax credits interspersed with periods of no federal support whatsoever, have given us "feast or famine" cycles of clean energy development, whereby, renewable energy development ebbs and flows with the shifting political tides.

The tax credit/RPS model does little to encourage proliferation of the kind of small-scale renewable energy generation Mr. Owl refers to in his question. For example, the PTC is only applicable to those entities with a large enough tax liability to make a tax credit worthwhile (usually multinational energy companies). Excluded from taking advantage of the PTC are most individuals, churches, schools, water districts, neighborhood associations, or any other not-for-profit organization.

I submit that the best way to develop this country's renewable energy sources is not necessarily to extend those languishing tax credits for another couple of years, but rather to democratize the grid by guaranteeing a fixed tariff for anyone who puts electricity back on it. The "feed-in tariff" model is the primary reason that half of the world's installed solar PV is in Germany. German feed-in laws require utilities to pay a specific tariff based on the technology used to generate the electricity. The idea behind the different payouts is that they will eventually drive down prices of the more expensive technologies so they become more competitive with other sources. Thanks to the feed-in, Germany now gets about 15% of its electricity from renewable sources, at an added monthly cost of about $1.69 per household.

In the U.S., on the other hand, those who put solar, small wind, biomass, etc. back on the grid are lucky if they can benefit from a local "net-metering" policy, which allows meters to spin backwards, but doesn't allow the folks who own them to actually turn a profit.

Feed-in tariffs have been introduced in several U.S. states, and most recently, a national feed-in tariff proposed by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) may be introduced in the House as early as this week. But as I mentioned at the outset, the policies and institutional structures that have been bu