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A few years ago, environmental guru, Merry Prankster, and Whole Earth Catalog author Stewart Brand caused a minor stir with an article he wrote in the MIT publication, Technology Review.  Brand, who was an early advocate of the “back to the land” movement of the 1960s and 1970s, had done some re-thinking, and concluded that environmentalist opposition to things like urbanization, population growth, biotechnology, and nuclear power generation, was wrong and needed to change.

Now, Brand has written a new book, called Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, in which he takes on these environmental shibboleths in a more concerted fashion.  On American Public Radio’s Marketplace program yesterday, host Kai Ryssdal discussed the new book with Brand.  Asked what prompted him to write the book, Brand said that,

“My fellow environmentalists have been wrong about a couple of issues and were getting in the way of important things we should be doing, both with biotechnology and with nuclear technology, and in terms of how we think about cities, and in terms of how I know we’re going to think about geoengineering–that is, direct intervention in the climate.”

Ryssdal contrasted Brand’s earlier support for the back to the land movement with his current belief that big cities are better for the environment.

“Not only big cities, but big slums … that’s how [poor people in the developing world] are getting out of poverty.  They’re emptying out a lot of the subsistence farms that have been tough on the landscape all over the world, moving into towns for opportunity, building jobs for each other.  They’re also moving up what’s called the energy ladder, toward more and better grid electricity.  By and large the cities are probably the greenest thing that humans do.”

On his support for biotech crops, Brand said,

“Already, the crops we have now, the herbicide-tolerant and the insect-resistant crops … [are] getting what amounts to higher yields. You can raise more food on less land, and all of that is good for ecology in general and the climate particularly.”

Challenged that critics call them Frankenfoods, Brand replied,

“The idea there was that Dr. Frankenstein was doing something against nature, and that somehow the genetically engineered food crops are against nature.  And as a biologist, I’m just baffled by that line of argument because agriculture has been in that sense against nature for 10,000 years. That we’re finally able to do more precise tuning of the crops is a huge gain, not a loss.”

A quick point to add to Fran Smith’s excellent post on Sweden’s experiment in labeling food and menus for their carbon footprints: don’t read too much into the labels.

The New York Times notes that “the emissions impact of, say, a carrot, can vary by a factor of 10, depending how and where it is grown.” With that much imprecision built in, if the labels change consumer behavior as much as supporters hope, it’s entirely possible that eco-concsious diets could result in more carbon emissions, not less. A classic case of leaping before you look.

This new religion is a piece of work. It comes complete with a deity (Gaia), clergy (activists), indulgences (carbon credits), and now, dietary restrictions.

The World Wildlife Fund, in a press release on May 15, 2007:

Sustainable energy and technology can curb climate change and meet projected growth in demand for energy but only if key decisions are made within the next five years, according to a new WWF report. Climate Solutions: WWF’s vision for 2050 concludes that sustainable technologies can meet global projected energy demand while avoiding the most dangerous impacts of climate change….

“This report says that we can breathe a sigh of relief: it’s not too late to save ourselves and our children from the worst ravages of climate change while still meeting the demand for energy,” said Richard Mott, Vice President for International Policy at World Wildlife Fund.  “But the report also warns that this opportunity is fleeting.  Any delay and our choices become both more difficult and much more expensive.”

Today in Popular Science:

It’s no secret that the world is warming, but a new report published by the World Wildlife Fund suggests we may not have as much time to mull solutions as we think. If the world doesn’t commit to green technologies by 2014, the report says, runaway global warming and economic meltdown are all but unstoppable.

A two-year reprieve — whew! But I thought we needed to act now?

Bjørn Lomborg, head of the Copenhagen Consensus, brings some much-needed common sense to the global warming debate. Reporting from Vanuatu, he finds that many of the locals haven’t even heard of global warming.

Torethy Frank is one of them. She has other priorities, such as escaping crushing poverty: “Torethy and her family of six live in a small house made of concrete and brick with no running water. As a toilet, they use a hole dug in the ground. They have no shower and there is no fixed electricity supply.”

You can see why the two degrees of projected warming over the next century are not at the top of her “problems to solve” list. I would argue that ending global poverty should be a little higher on ours. Certainly higher than global warming.

The professoriate at Wellesley does not come across as high-minded in this account of a recent visit from CEI’s Chris Horner in today’s Planet Gore.

There was a good turnout at Wellesley College last night for my talk “A Quick Tour of the Ultimate in Political Correctness: The ‘Global Warming’ Issue, Agenda and Industry,” hosted by the College Republican Club . . . once presided over here by Hillary Rodham on her way to a thesis about Saul Alinksy, whose ghost (as we see) still lingers. 

The students were gracious – particularly given the trying circumstances in recent days, including a faculty member (department-head level) expressing in a fairly open forum, with occasional lapses of civility, her sentiments about the club members and their decision to premiere Not Evil Just Wrong on Sunday, followed by hosting me on Wednesday. Oddly, her peculiar take on tolerance and campus diversity included an often salty angst over the students’ supposedly showing no interest in having debate or discussion. 

Odd, because she had been originally approached to speak last night as part of a panel. She said, in short, no professor would want to participate with someone “like that” (er, me). School administrators have now agreed to address the issue of this kind of treatment of a political minority (of which, as you can guess, last night was only the most recent instance). But, having failed to interest any faculty in joining me on a panel – let alone debating the merits – the students finally asked a different faculty member to speak after the film on Sunday. He declined and offered instead an informative lunch with his faculty colleagues – the kind who don’t want open discussion or debate, at least not with anyone but their students.

Click here for the rest.

Senators Kit Bond (R-MO) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) have just released a report, Climate Change Legislation: A $3.6 Trillion Gas Tax, which estimates how much additional pain at the pump the Waxman-Markey would inflict on U.S. consumers.

The Waxman-Markey bill (like its Senate companion, Kerry-Boxer) aims to cap U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from 2012 to 2050. Bond and Hutchison estimate the bill’s impacts on motor fuel prices during 2015 to 2050. Of course, their study depends on assumptions regarding population growth, GDP growth, and technology change out to 2050. But in that regard, the Bond-Hutchison report is no different from any other study of Waxman-Markey, including studies touted by the bill’s supporters.

A virtue of this report is its straightforward, uncomplicated methodology. Anyone who can do arithmetic can understand how Bond and Hutchison arrive at their conclusions.

Here’s how Bond and Hutchison proceeded:

• For estimates of how Waxman-Markey would affect motor fuel prices, they relied on a study prepared by Charles River Associates for the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC). The NBCC study estimates, for example, that Waxman-Markey would increase the average price per gallon of motor fuels by 24¢ in 2020, 38¢ in 2030, 59¢ in 2040, and 95¢ in 2050.
• Bond and Hutchison also use the NBCC study’s estimate of how much fuel Americans would consume annually from 2015 through 2050.
• Then, for each year during this period, they multiplied the number of gallons consumed times the price increase per gallon.
• Bond and Hutchison note that the NBCC study’s fuel-price estimates take into account the relevant Waxman-Markey cost-containment provision, under which refiners get 2.25% of all emission allowances free-of-charge during 2014 to 2026.
• Finally, Bond and Hutchison added up the increased annual fuel costs from 2015 through 2050.

Here are some of the results:

• In 2020, Waxman-Markey will impose $43.6 billion in additional fuel costs on the American people. This will rise to $78.1 billion in 2030, $128.2 billion in 2040, and $215.8 billion in 2050.
• Cumulatively, Waxman-Markey will impose $3.6 trillion dollars in additional total fuel costs on the United States.
• In 2020, Waxman-Markey will increase each gallon of gasoline purchased by 24¢. With Americans expected to consume 122 bilion gallons of gasoline in that year, Waxman-Markey will impose $27.5 billion in additional gasoline costs.
• In 2030, with Waxman-Markey forcing gasoline 38¢ higher per gallon, Americans will pay $42.3 billion more for gasoline.
• Waxman-Markey will force the price of each of the 83 billion gallons of diesel fuel consumed by Americans in 2020 higher by 17¢ and $12.9 billion in total. By 2030, Waxman-Markey will force diesel 28¢ higher per gallon, totaling $28.3 billion.
• In 2020, Waxman-Markey will make jet fuel 11¢ more expensive per gallon. Americans will consume 34 billion gallons of jet fuel in their air travel, imposing $3.2 billion in additinal jet fuel costs. This figure rises to an additional $7 billion in 2030.
• In 2020, each farmer in the Northeast on average will pay $630 in additional fuel costs. Farmers in the South will pay an additional $966 on average, and farmers in the Midwest an additional $1,213 on average.
• In 2020, the average  owner of a diesel-powered tractor-trailor will pay an additional $1,728 for fuel.

To wrap up, Bond and Hutchison make a significant contribution to the debate by clarifying the consumer impacts of cap-and-trade legislation.

“Climate change is a threat multiplier” is the new trendy rationale for Kyoto-style energy rationing. One hears little these days about Al Gore’s nightmare vision of death and destruction from ever more powerful and frequent hurricanes, catastrophic sea-level rise, or a warming-induced climate shift into a new ice age. This story line is too implausible for most grownups to swallow or patronize, no matter how desperate they are to look green.

The new, more ‘nuanced’ rationale for energy rationing is that global warming will aggravate several pre-existing environmental and health threats that cause or contribute to instability and conflict. We’re supposed to fear that a warming world will be much more violent and dangerous. Supposedly, “even the generals are worried” that U.S. security forces will be overstretched, even overwhelmed, by crisis after crisis after crisis. Unless, of course, Congress comes through with bigger and bigger appropriations for DOD! 

This is bunkum, as I discuss here, here, and here. Today, I want to pour more cold water on threat-multiplier hype, courtesy of my colleague, environmental researcher Indur Goklany.

Goklany (”Goks” to his friends) recently responded to an article in the Economist arguing that global warming exacerbates conditions (drought, flooding, hunger, insect-borne disease) in poor countries that already impede their development. From which it follows (although the article doesn’t spell it out) that climate change increases the likelihood of state failure, violence, and war.

Chief among the conditions that will allegedly become worse in a warming world are drought and flooding. ”Regardless of whether this is the case,”  Goks writes in his letter to the Economist, “deaths from droughts have declined 99.9% since the 1920s, and 99% from floods since the 1930s” [1]. Yet alarmists tell us that the warming of the latter half of the 20th century was unprecedented in the past 1300 years.

In view of the long-established and overwhelming trends towards greater safety, despite allegedly unprecedented warming, it is difficult to believe that droughts and floods will be a major cause of violent conflict in coming decades. That is especially the case when, as noted previously, nations faced with water shortages typically cooperate and trade, not come to blows.

More broadly, Goks points out, all the long-term trends in environmental factors affecting development are positive:

In fact, access to safe water, improved sanitation, crop yields, and life expectancy has never been higher in the history of mankind.[2] This is true for both the developing and developed worlds. Much of this has been enabled, directly or indirectly, by economic surpluses generated by the use of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas generating activities such as fertilizer usage, pumping water for irrigation, and use of farm machinery. And crop yields, in particular, are also higher today than ever partly because of higher concentrations of CO2, without which yields would be zero.

Some day — who knows when?– “even the generals” will outgrow climate hysteria and get back to worrying about threats they actually know how to do something about.

Today’s New York Times carries an article, “Hopes fade for comprehensive climate treaty.“  It’s not that important an article about the lead-up to Copenhagen.  What’s most interesting are the comments from these NYT readers — many expressing skepticism about catastrophic global warming, confusion about the science, and linkages between energy use and economic growth. Here are some examples of those views – of course, the usual “sky is falling” comments are there too.

MrPitchfork

Maybe some day, someone will finally say, “Global warming is a fraud perpetrated by Al Gore and other green technology invested twits to make themselves rich at tax payers expense” and it fall and die and turn into “Global cooling”… again..

Dan DiLeo

Faced with the pressing desire of their citizens for improved living standards,it is hard to imagine the leaders of poor and emerging countries to do anything that might conceivably inhibit the most rapid and most well-tested possible path to development. The only conceivable way to get them to sign on is through some enormous and very reliable transfer of wealth to those countries. Very hard to envision.

Paul

Good news! I knew we could count on the international bureaucrats to disagree and throw a monkey wrench into this farce called global warming. As the world starts a cyclical cooling trend maybe they will come to their senses, if that is even possible for these people.

Glenn

[Excerpt from lengthy comment]… My suggestion? I would love for a news source like the New York Times to host a series of debates between the scientists on both sides of this issue. No politicians or other loudmouths allowed. I’d like to see an agenda created ahead of time, negotiated by both sides so the issues are framed properly and also have the encounters structured so that the key issues are given enough time to be thoroughly explored. If the AGW folks win this hands down – as they should if the debate it’s structured properly, than folks like me can feel more assured in demanding the very difficult policy decisions that we must make from our leadership.

Finally, I know that the Gore’s of the world, and many other’s, say “the debate is over” but clearly, in the real world, it’s not, otherwise we’d be seeing different behavior. Let’s do this, let’s make it global and make it a learning experience for all of us. Instead of cursing the darkness and hoping our government can force policy on folks who don’t believe in AGW, let’s lead people to understand this issue more clearly. I think that may be the only chance we have, and if the planet is really at risk, then of course the effort is worth it.

AlexBell

The USA march toward European Socialism will result in the colapse of our ecconomy and way of life. Countries like Brazil, India, China, and Russia are growing because the have and is energy as a way of growing their ecconomy. The USA can not shrink its self to propserity. Renewable energy – Yes. Energy indepentence – Yes. Cap and Trade (tax) – NO NO!!

The usually courteous practice of international diplomacy degenerated into name-calling last week over which nations are responsible for the slow pace of negotiations for a successor climate treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which environmentalists hope will be finalized this December in Copenhagen.

It all started when Yu Qingtai, a Chinese official, told reporters during a Bangkok climate conference that, “I have yet to see a developed country or a group of developed countries coming up to say to the public, the international community and to their own people that they are not here to kill the Kyoto Protocol.”

He was referring to the concept of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol, which absolves developing countries from any responsibility to fight climate change until they attain a higher standard of living. Developed countries want to jettison this principle because rapidly developing countries (such as China, India, and Brazil) will account for almost all future increases in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Qingtai’s comments elicited a response from the European Union’s lead negotiator, Mr. Runger-Metzger, who told reporters that, “You may have heard that China accused the EU of killing off the Kyoto Protocol. But it is the U.S. that is trying to kill it. They want everything ‘common’ and nothing ‘differentiated.'”

Mr. Runger-Metzger’s assertion is patently false-European nations have repeatedly indicated that treaty to fight global warming must include rapidly developing countries. That’s why an anonymous diplomat told BusinessWeek that “The EU is briefing against the U.S., but they aren’t doing anything where it matters-attacking the U.S. position in the talks themselves.”

The December deadline for a climate treaty has long been in doubt. This week’s undiplomatic cattiness suggests that a breakthrough is all but unthinkable.