Gregg Easterbrook has an Op Ed piece (subscription only) in today’s NY Times that discusses carbon offsets and the international dynamics of global warming. While his Op Ed is a pretty glossy discussion, I thought readers might be interested in Easterbrook’s ideas, expressed in a paper for the Brookings Institute about global warming, “Case Closed: The Debate about Global Warming is Over.”
I’ll save you the agony of going through an entire think-tank paper and cut to the chase. Easterbrook posits that global warming, like all other pollution problems humanity has faced, can be successfully combated through focused, market-based government incentives and restrictions. Further, he believes the solutions are probably not as far away as most people think.
Personally, I’m not sure about some of Easterbrook’s projections, but his optimism and willingness to confront practical issues are worth disseminating widely. I suspect that his ideas address at least some of the issues we need to confront immediately.
Here are a few (very abbreviated) high points from his 2006 paper:
If market-based greenhouse gas restrictions create
a profit incentive to reduce greenhouse emissions,
many good things should happen:
• New techniques for generating electricity will come
into use…
• Green motor fuels will become more widely
used…
• New fuels will be invented…
• Energy-efficient technology will rise in popularity…
• Wind, solar and nuclear power—all zero-
greenhouse sources of energy— will rise in
popularity…
• Somebody will make the big breakthrough…
What world leaders most urgently need to know
today about global warming is not what computer
models say the temperature will be, say, in Paraguay
in 2063 or any similar conjecture. Rather, they need
to know if a program of mandatory greenhouse gas
reduction via market-based trading will work without
harming the global economy. If the answer is “yes,”
then an artificial greenhouse effect is not destiny.
The only way to find out if the answer is yes is to
start greenhouse trading programs that include
mandatory reductions.
A significant fraction of corporate America already
assumes that mandatory greenhouse reductions are
inevitable and is simply waiting for Washington to
say a single word: "Go." …
Right now the catalytic converter and "reformulated"
gasoline, anti-smog technology invented here, are
beginning to spread broadly throughout developing
nations. If America were to impose greenhouse gas
reductions on a solely domestic basis—keep the
United Nations out of this—it is likely that the United
States would soon develop the technology that
would light the way for the rest of the world on
reducing global warming. The United States was the
first country to overcome smog (ahead of the
European Union by years), the first to overcome
acid rain, and we should be first to overcome global
warming. Once we have shown the world that
greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced without
economic harm, other nations will follow our lead
voluntarily. The United States needs to start now
with mandatory greenhouse gas reductions not out
of guilt or shame, but because it is a fight we can
win.
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