The first paper I ever wrote on the subject of climate change policy – as a college sophomore in a class on Environmental Geology – argued that we could hedge against the various uncertainties surrounding climate science and policy by pursuing an agenda that had other benefits as well, like curbing other pollutants, preventing deforestation, or reducing oil dependence. My sophomore self has been vindicated by a new report out by “The Hartwell Group”, made up of more than a dozen influential energy and climate scholars and analysts. Its title is “Climate Pragmatism: Innovation, Resilience, and No Regrets.” (For the shorter version, see this blog post at The Breakthrough Institute.)
Here is an overview:
Energy innovation, resilience to extreme weather, and no regrets pollution reduction — each of these goals has its own diverse justifications:
• Support for energy innovation today comes from those concerned about the high (and rising) economic costs, not to mention the foreign entanglements created by America’s dependence on oil; the need for greater energy access in poor countries; diseases and deaths caused by air pollution, oil and gas drilling, and coal mining and waste; and the potential for America to manufacture and export new energy technologies at a profit. All of these motivations play to America’s strengths, and each can assemble a strong coalition of support.
• Rich and poor countries alike are vulnerable to a wide range of complex socio-technical disasters, some climate change-related, some not. Domestically, Hurricane Katrina and the recent Mississippi flooding provide compelling rationale for improving resilience to extreme weather events, whether they are exacerbated by climate change or not. Internationally, US support to build disaster resilience in developing countries is strong and longstanding, and US foreign aid remains the highest in the world. When harnessed to build resilience to extreme weather and disasters, both domestic and internationalefforts will be more successful.
• And motivated by a clear desire to protect public health, the United States has long beena global leader in the development and deployment of pollution abatement technologies,from the creation of smokestack scrubbers to the invention of alternatives to ozonedepleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). A redoubling of such efforts can yield simultaneous progress to reduce climate forcings.
This report ambitiously treads on the precarious ground between policy and politics, assessing climate policy levers in the context of their political viability. This is a necessary exercise, and along those lines I want to add a quick point.
As the clean energy community reorients itself, I sometimes worry that we suffer from short-term memory loss. By that I mean that we are in danger of viewing the political landscape as static rather than dynamic. We assess the likelihood of a carbon price in this year (0.7% chance according to InTrade) and look at the polling around “cap-and-trade” and we adjust accordingly. That is prudent and necessary.
But as we do so we ought not forget that the odds that cap-and-trade would pass were drastically higher, if not high enough, just a couple of years ago (remember when Waxman-Markey passed the House?). “Cap-and-trade” itself was not yet a dirty phrase, as the campaign to brand it as “cap-and-tax” had not yet happened. It was a radically different political landscape. Whether or not cap-and-trade is your preferred policy mechanism, my point is this: just because something polls well today, or is looked on favorably by Washington, doesn’t mean the same will be true tomorrow. Much depends on the ongoing struggles of clean energy advocates and opponents. So while we can and should be pragmatic about what has a chance of passing, we need to remember that today’s pragmatism can be tomorrow’s idealism or, conversely, lack of ambition.
This is all, in my view, consistent with the Climate Pragmatism analysis. By pursuing policies with important ancillary benefits, we harness a wider range of constituencies and strengthen the clean energy movement overall. Yes, some policies will always be heavier lifts than others. But embracing pragmatism for the long-term means not only evaluating the “realm of the possible” in the short-term, but working to shape it over time.
