By Institute for Energy Research ——Bio and Archives--January 28, 2015
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It is difficult to get governors on the West Coast to understand the potential they have to impact global climate change via an appropriate policy, but that capping their emissions does very little. It is almost an extension of the Hollywood starlet’s vow to use only one square of toilet paper (and extra soap, presumably) and drive a Tesla. Her actions and California capping emissions are nice, but they make it easier for others to burn the fossil fuels… My frustration in making clear the need for an across-the-board carbon fee if we are to phase out fossil fuels must have boiled over when I described California’s cap-and-trade as “half-assed[2] and half-baked” with Governor Brown in the front row of the audience. Well, it is half-assed, because it cannot yield an effective global agreement (it is necessary to argue individually with 200 nations; start with one, India, what is its cap?). It is half-baked, and will always be half-baked, because conservatives will never accept cap-and-tax. Californians may be willing and able to pay higher prices and receive no dividends, but most people won’t.
It seems that [the 2015 climate conference in] Paris may produce little, mainly promises to try to reduce emissions. That is a prescription for a Kyoto II disaster. The problem starts with the UN “science”, the claim that 2°C is the “dangerous” boundary. Actual science tells us no such thing. Physical science tells us that we are pushing dangerous already as we push above the Holocene climate range and that we need to reduce emissions as rapidly as practical. Economic science tells us that the implication is we must raise the price of carbon-based fuels across-the-board in a way that can readily be made near-global.So the next time Internet bullies like Joe Romm say we have to stop denying the truth of IPCC reports because their every word has been “signed off on by every major government in the world,” we can safely refer to the authority of Al Gore’s mentor and former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute, James Hansen, to reject the silliness of such empty statements.
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