Storms of My Grandchildren (28 page)

That was the world’s experience with the Kyoto Protocol. It was not a success, despite the fact that many countries suffered considerable pain in trying to meet its obligations.

Today we are faced with the need to achieve rapid reductions in global fossil fuel emissions and to nearly phase out fossil fuel emissions by the middle of the century. Most governments are saying that they recognize these imperatives. And they say that they will meet these objectives with a Kyoto-like approach. Ladies and gentlemen, your governments are lying through their teeth. You may wish to use softer language, but the truth is that they know that their planned approach will not come anywhere near achieving the intended global objectives. Moreover, they are now taking actions that, if we do not stop them, will lock in guaranteed failure to achieve the targets that they have nominally accepted.

How can we say that about our governments? How can we be so sure? We just have to open our eyes. First, they are allowing construction of new coal-fired power plants. Second, they are allowing construction of coal-to-liquids plants that will produce oil from coal. Third, they are allowing development of unconventional fossil fuels such as tar sands. Fourth, they are leasing public lands and remote areas for oil and gas exploration to search for the last drop of hydrocarbons. Fifth, they are allowing companies to lease land for hydraulic fracturing, an environmentally destructive mining technique to extract every last bit of gas by injecting large amounts of water deep underground to shatter rocks and release trapped gas. Sixth, they are allowing highly destructive mountaintop-removal and long-wall coal mining, both of which cause extensive environmental damage for the sake of getting as much coal as possible. In long-wall mining, a giant machine chews out a coal seam underground—subsequent effects include groundwater pollution and subsidence of the terrain, which can damage surface structures. And on and on.

Figure 26 shows that if coal emissions are phased out entirely and unconventional fossil fuels are prohibited, fossil fuel emissions in 2050 will be somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of emissions in 2008. In other words, the reserves of conventional oil and gas are already enough to take emissions up to the maximum levels that governments have agreed on. The IPCC estimate, in which we exploit only the most readily available oil and gas, allows the possibility of getting emissions levels back to 350 ppm this century.

The problem is that our governments, under the heavy thumb of special interests, are not pursuing policies that would restrict our fossil fuel use to conventional oil and gas and move the world rapidly toward a post-fossil-fuel economy. Quite the contrary, they are pursuing policies to get every last drop of fossil fuel, including coal, by whatever means necessary, regardless of environmental damage. With the policies governments are pursuing, fossil fuel emissions will be much larger in 2050 than shown in figure 26, and possibly larger than emissions today.

I emphasize, first, that a linear phaseout of coal emissions by 2030 (emissions reduced to half by 2020) is a huge challenge, requiring urgent actions now. Developed countries will need to complete their coal phaseout by about 2020. That is a tall order. For example, the United States obtains half its electricity from coal-fired power plants, all of which will need to be replaced by some combination of improved energy efficiency and alternative energy sources. The fact that developed countries are not scheduling a rapid phaseout of coal plants and working hard on alternatives shows that, in fact, they have no realistic expectation of meeting their stated goals.

I emphasize, second, that we have all the ingredients we need to meet this challenge—except leadership willing to buck the special financial interests benefiting from business as usual. The tragic aspect of this story is that the specific actions that we have so far neglected to take—which I will describe momentarily—would actually have great benefits for the nation, for nature, for our children and grandchildren.

“Foo,” you may be thinking. “This must be exaggerated nonsense. Our leaders are not so stupid that they would turn their backs on sensible policies with multiple benefits.” Hold on. Here are a few brief comments to try to allay your concerns about implausibility. Think Washington. Think lobbyists. Think revolving doors. There were 2,340 registered energy lobbyists when I checked in early 2009 (more now, and not all are registered, by any means). As an example, one lobbyist, former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt, received $120,000 from coal company Peabody Energy in 2008—per quarter. That’s almost half a million dollars per year. As they say back in my hometown, “It’s good pay if you can get it.”

The letter to Prime Minister Fukuda (available on my Web site) was more policy-specific than most of the letters I had written to other national leaders and U.S. governors over the preceding year. The letter was intended for a broad audience—the G8 leaders and the public—rather than only the prime minister. I may have been feeling a bit frustrated, as the final two paragraphs, added during the bus ride from Narita, were probably a bit cheeky and perhaps even sarcastic:

Finally, Prime Minister Fukuda, I would like to thank you for helping make clear to the other leaders of the eight nations the great urgency of the actions needed to address climate change. Might I make one suggestion for an approach you could use in drawing their attention? If the leaders find that the concept of phasing out all emissions from coal, and taking measures to ensure that unconventional fossil fuels are left in the ground or used only with zero-carbon emissions, is too inconvenient, then, in that case, they could instead spend a small amount of time composing a letter to be left for future generations.

The letter should explain that the leaders realized their failure to take these actions would cause our descendants to inherit a planet with a warming ocean, disintegrating ice sheets, rising sea level, increasing climate extremes, and vanishing species, but it would have been too much trouble to make changes to our energy systems and to oppose the business interests who insisted on burning every last bit of fossil fuels. By composing this letter the leaders will at least achieve an accurate view of their place in history.

My experiences in the U.K., Germany, and Japan are representative. My correspondence with other governments, notably Australia, and with several U.S. governors is available on my Web site. Most of the politicians advertised themselves as being “green,” but what I learned was that, invariably, it amounted to greenwash, demostrating token environmental support while kowtowing to fossil fuel special interests. To be generous, most of these leaders probably kidded themselves into believing that their modest green efforts were meaningful.

There are rays of hope, however. There seems to be a chance that the U.K. will phase out coal emissions by 2025. However, this progress was not a result of persuasion due to the scientific rationale that I presented in visits to the U.K. Instead it was based on a popular campaign there in which citizens—especially activists, but also the mainstream public, scientists, the financial sector, and even some politicians—exposed government greenwash. I will discuss such activities further in chapter 11.

Okay, given that our political leaders do not want to face up to the truth, what do we do? The worst thing would be to stick our heads in the sand and let the politicians and fossil fuel industry get away with their short-term views and their short-term profits, allowing them to destroy the prospects for young people and future generations. Instead, we need to look at the situation objectively and strategically, ask what the world must aim for, examine empirical data that can help us evaluate what works and what does not—and then even throw in some common sense.

Let’s return to some empirical data from way back in figure 2 (chapter 2, page 21). The graph shows that most of the energy in the United States comes from fossil fuels. It also shows Amory Lovins’s target for replacing all fossil fuels with renewable energy—his scenario eliminates nuclear power and large hydroelectric power as well. The good news shown in figure 2 is that improved energy efficiency during the past three decades reduced the expected growth of U.S. energy use, even though the population increased. The bad news is that the rapid ascendancy that Lovins foresaw for “soft” renewable energies, such as the wind and sun, never occurred—their contribution to total U.S. energy is still minuscule.

Why have fossil fuels continued to reign supreme? The main reason is price—fossil fuels are cheap. Oil and gas are also convenient, portable fuels. And fossil fuels are a reliable source of electricity, not intermittent like the wind and sun. Governments have tried to spur renewable energies by requiring utilities to obtain a specified fraction of their electricity generation from renewable sources, but success so far has been limited. Moreover, some people argue that the renewable energies are not so “soft”—arrays of solar collectors and wind turbines have their own environmental footprint, and often require new power lines to carry electricity from remote areas to population centers.

Germany provides useful empirical evidence about progress in quitting the fossil fuel addiction. Germany is making a major effort to improve energy efficiency. It is also trying hard to promote renewable energy, with large subsidies for wind and solar energies. Wind provides up to 20 percent of the country’s electric energy in winter, but on annual mean the wind and sun produced only 7.3 percent of Germany’s electricity in 2008. That renewable fraction is still growing, but at a cost—some industries have cited increased electric rates as a reason for relocating outside Germany.

But what is disturbing about the empirical evidence from Germany is that, despite technical prowess and strong efforts in energy efficiency and renewable energies, there are no plans to phase out coal. On the contrary, there are plans to build new coal-fired power plants, which the German government claims will be necessary once the country closes its nuclear power plants. The bottom line seems to be that it is not feasible in the foreseeable future to phase out coal unless nuclear power is included in the energy mix.