Debunking Shellenberger & Nordhaus: Part I

The death of 'The Death of Environmentalism'

Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 8:06 AM on 03 Oct 2007

Read more about: climate | energy | climate change mitigation

What do Michael Crichton, Bjorn Lomborg, Frank Luntz, George W. Bush (and his climate/energy advisors) have in common with Michael Shellenberger & Ted Nordhaus? They all believe that (1) new "breakthrough" technologies are needed to solve the global warming problem and (2) investing in such technology is far more important than regulating carbon.

In fairness to President Bush -- he doesn't really believe those two things (as evidenced by the fact that he has actually cut funding for key carbon-reducing technologies), he just says them because conservative strategist Frank Luntz says it's the best way to sound like you care about global warming without doing anything about it.

The "breakthrough technology" message is certainly the cleverest one the deniers and delayers have invented -- who wouldn't rather have a techno-fix than higher energy prices? That's why Lomborg endorses it so much in his book, Cool It -- but it is certainly wrong and dangerously so, as I argue at length in my book.

Why two people who say they care about the environment -- Shellenberger & Nordhaus (S&N) -- embrace it, I don't understand. I won't waste time reading their new instant bestseller, unhelpfully titled Break Through, and you shouldn't either (Roger Pielke, Jr., and Gregg Easterbrook endorse it -- 'nuff said). I've read more than enough misinformation from them in their landmark essay,"The Death of Environmentalism," and recent articles in The New Republic (subs. req'd) and Gristmill (here and here).

S&N simply don't know what they're talking about. Worse, their message plays right into the hands of those who counsel delay. For that reason, I will spend some time debunking them. Here is the most dangerous S&N falsehood, from TNR:

Over the last ten years, a consensus has emerged among energy policy experts -- one no less important than the consensus among climate scientists that carbon emissions are warming the earth. What's needed, they say, are disruptive clean-energy technologies that achieve non-incremental breakthroughs in both price and performance.

Uh, no. Energy policy is my field, and I have talked to virtually all of the leading energy policy experts over the past few years. A few believe as S&N do (mostly academics), but the majority do not -- especially those who are actual energy practitioners or who have taken the time to educate themselves on climate science. Yes, they all want much higher funding for clean energy R&D. Who doesn't (other than the phantom "pain-and-sacrifice-loving" environmentalists only S&N seem to have met)?

But energy practioners know that meaningful breakthroughs rarely, if ever, happen in energy (a key point I will return to in subsequent posts). I can say that with high confidence, since I ran the federal office responsible for doing the vast majority of the research into new carbon-free technologies.

And those who have studied climate science understand that we simply have run out of time to pin much hope on breakthroughs that may never come, no matter how much money we spend on R&D. Developed country carbon emissions need to peak in the next decade (and developing country emissions soon thereafter), or we will ruin the planet for the next 50 generations no matter what technologies they have at their disposal. Put another way, if we can't stop catastrophic global warming with technologies that exist now or are already in the pipeline, we aren't going to stop catastrophic global warming.

S&N's go-slow approach to climate, as first advanced in "The Death of Environmentalism," should have died once it became clear that climate change is happening much faster than scientists feared, and that if we don't act now with all the technology we have available, we risk crossing tipping points whereby amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks would overwhelm any positive carbon-reducing benefits for new technology.

S&N write in Gristmill:

Public investment will be far more important than pollution limits in driving technological innovation and reducing the real price of clean energy. This point seems to be controversial only among environmentalists.

No. Pollution limits are far, far more important than R&D for what really matters -- reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and driving clean technologies into the marketplace. Until carbon has a significant price, coal will remain the dominant low-cost energy supply -- and key low-carbon strategies, like carbon capture and storage, will never be achieved. And for the record, I am not an environmentalist. I personally don't know a single energy person who believes what S&N claims is not controversial.

Indeed, private investment is far more important than public investment in reducing the real price of clean energy -- especially for the far more important task of reducing the total costs of clean energy for consumers. That's because private investment is so much larger than public investment -- if it can be harnessed through intelligent regulations. Don't get me wrong -- I'd love to see my old office at the DOE have its budget increased dramatically. I just don't think that a massive increase in public investment is even among the top three things I would do if I were running U.S. climate policy, a point I will elaborate on in Part II.

S&N may not consider it worrisome that they are touting the exact same strategy on climate as Michael Crichton, Bjorn Lomborg, Frank Luntz, and George W. Bush and his climate/energy advisors -- but I would rather be on the other side of whatever those folks are pushing.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

For story: Debunking Shellenberger & Nordhaus: Part I
16 Comments | Post a Comment

Hmm

Would I be wrong to think that we could put together two ideas?

S&N is claiming that non-incremental abatement is impossible
Clinton Global Initiative is planning to innovate on long-term financing to incentivize renewable development and production today. (Because the savings are mostly long term. So you want to translate that into a revenue stream that turns quickly positive.)

Suppose S&N are really right that the technology isn't there. Then if we pass a cap-and-trade bill of around 80% GHG reduction, it will be impossible to fulfill in the time frame. So the carbon price will approach infinity.

Given those odds, if that's really true, why can't we combine that situation with innovative long-term financing and give companies all the incentive in the world to achieve R&D breakthroughs?

It may be that it's just not how things are done, so we couldn't count on it. But maybe it's at least plausible.

by mkayser at 8:26 AM on 03 Oct 2007

No breakthroughs required

One clean energy technology that's being deployed right now is solar thermal. For instance, this company claims the entire U.S. energy demand could be supplied with a 92 x 92 mile square of their collectors. They say that's less land than is used for coal mines in the U.S. The cost is much lower than photovoltaics, around 8 cents/KWh delivered. The nice thing is this is fairly mature technology with several decades' track record -- no heroic breakthroughs required. It would, however, necessitate a national expansion and upgrade of the electrical grid.

Why aren't our elected officials pushing solutions like this?

Ped Shed Blog

by Laurence Aurbach at 8:41 AM on 03 Oct 2007

If global warming is really a big problem...

...which I think it is, and something has to be done quickly, which I think it does, why not use public investment to just buy the solar panels, windmills, etc., put them on roofs, etc., and shut down the coal plants? What's wrong with just publicly investing in public transit, which is the only way to get cars off the road? Just because N&S wimp out on how to do public investment doesn't mean that public investment is not a good idea. It should be right up there with regulation; why not put solar panels on all government buildings, for instance? Why is an uncertain process of market tweeking better than public investment in an emergency? Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

by Jon Rynn at 8:46 AM on 03 Oct 2007

ID the energy

A breakthrough in what - perpetual motion? Identify the energy source first, then the cost of access. There are only a few low-carbon sources big enough to supply humanity - molten magma, moon gravity, nuclear, wind, and solar. Solar is the largest and most widely accessible. Current solar technology has 90% collector efficiency (80% system efficiency). The costs start at $15 per oil barrel equivalent. Cogeneration with 41% efficient $1/Watt HIPV is available today. What is the definition of the so called "breakthrough"?

by sunflower at 9:03 AM on 03 Oct 2007

We need both

Breakthroughs are needed, because pushing further with everything we have now won't solve the problem. We also need to do everything we can with existing technology. We need both efforts, and for each side to attack the other side is counter-productive.

by Mark Powell at 10:04 AM on 03 Oct 2007

It will take everything and more

I also responded to the NRDC post.

I haven't read the original S&N piece, but have been following the discussions.

It will take major public investment in R&D to improve technology, particularly solar, which at current rates of improvement -- deployment and technology -- is likely to provide far less than 1% of the world's energy by 2030. Much of the money will come from private sources, but pretty much everyone in policy agrees that the public till should open a little further. I hope that you don't disagree with this point?

Both significantly increased public investment and cap and trade are necessary.

It bothers me that while UN and EU and other policy analyses assume that a combination of nuclear power plus coal and natural gas with carbon capture and storage (both more expensive and more GHG emitting than nuclear power) will provide a majority of the world's electricity in 2050, or worse, coal and natural gas without CCS, the environmentalist discussion tends to focus on wind and solar, oh my. I support wind and solar, I support incredible subsidies for deployment and R&D for wind and solar, particularly solar. But geez, people who get their info from Grist and NRDC seem to have a distorted sense of how important these energy sources will be.

For example, 90% collector efficiency, 80% system efficiency? Collectors in cost-does-not-matter applications (rockets) do not achieve that level of efficiency.

Jon, a trillion dollars in solar and wind won't go as far as you think. Climate change is expensive, but we need to spend the money a little more effectively than just giving away a trillion here, a trillion there. Also, re public transit, which I use because I don't own a car and I almost never use cars and never fly -- we need to finance it. But we also need to redesign cities to make driving even more inconvenient/public transit more convenient (you'd think that we would have achieved this, but people seem to have a great tolerance for traffic jams). And enough of the middle and upper class have to use it to change A) the subsidy/passenger and GHG emissions/passenger, and B) the way that public transit is seen by the middle and upper classes.

A Musing Environment

Karen Street

by Karen Street at 10:10 AM on 03 Oct 2007

Karen --

Absolutely we need to reconfigure towns and cities and turn suburbs into town centers, and public investment could help with that too -- public transit is an important first step, because it often leads to high-density building near transit stops, but I would be all for public investment in housing as well.

As far as whether one trillion dollars per year (or some portion of that ) would get you enough solar and wind to make a serious dent in coal use, well, as they say, that certainly needs some research, and it should be a topic of discussion, but it certainly would get us much closer. I don't think we need to hold our breath waiting for the market to get around to the determination that solar panels, for instance, make a lot of sense (or zero-emission buildings in general). If they are a few cents per kwh more than coal, so what? They're obviously much better, so just do it.

by Jon Rynn at 10:23 AM on 03 Oct 2007
[ Parent ]

Rockets use 39% efficient type III-V cells

They do not use terrestrial thermal and cogeneration solar. I do not get my efficacy information from Grist and NRDC. It comes from decades of looking at the sun.

by sunflower at 10:23 AM on 03 Oct 2007

Reduce Hydrocarbons

To me reducing CO2 is very simple: just reduce the amount of burned hydrocarbon. It could be coal, charcoal, fuel oil, diesel, gasoline, ethanol, natural gas, propane, or whatever.

Face it, folks, there is no technology that can reduce CO2 after you set something on fire. In fact for years, we invented catalysts and all kinds of contraptions to turn pollution such as CO into CO2. To even say there was or could be a technology to remove CO2 and destroy it is voodoo science at its worse.

Oh, you can make less CO2 or store some in other ways, such as underground, but that's not reducing CO2. The fact it, we need to replace burning of fossil fuels with KNOWN technologies. It is very a very simple concept.

So the technology argument doesn't work ... let's face it, you're going to have some unhappy campers in the fossil fuel industry, which is where the policy and politics come together.

Onward through the fog

by Sam Wells at 10:29 AM on 03 Oct 2007

Breakthrough Is the Problem

The Human Race is in a Texas Hold 'em game with mother nature.

The Technologists who are waiting for breakthroughs are like players holding K-8, they see 7-9-J on the board; straight draw; and are encouraging people to "think Queen". If they get Q on 4th Street, then they have to tell people to think 10...but we'll get to 5th street later...

The Enviros assume they will always be dealt 2-9, the worst hand possible by the Dealer (who represents Global Industrialism)...they want to leave the table because Poker is "not sustainable" but they keep playing and try to convince people to use a special "Green Deck" -- it's the same cards, but its green, and green is lucky...or something.

The Industrialists are holding pocket A-A. The flop has A-A-K on the board. They are hoping for another A on the turn and one on the river. They are greedy bastards who ignore reality.

Texeme.Construct.Questioner

by jabailo at 11:25 AM on 03 Oct 2007

S&N book

I'm almost through the S&N book. It's all a discussion on why there hasn't been a change to noncarbon energy sources. They spend so much time describing why it hasn't happened and just can't think of anyway to make it happen, they think our carbon energy use is inevitable.

It's about Paradigm thinking. Paradigm thinking is our thougth patterns, things we think about without considering alternatives.

I think there is one important thought pattern with the carbon-noncarbon fuel question.

That is tax money for government services should come from sales, property, income, social security taxes and others and not from taxing fossil fuels.

We tax 4 trillion dollars from Federal, State, and Local taxes in a 13 trillion dollar economy. Almost none of this comes directly form cabon and fossil fuels itself. And yet, fossil fuels is the polluting and depleatable resource. As an example, farmland, who's owner pays property taxes, will be here 50, 100, 500 and a million years from now. But the fossil fuels used to plant and harvest crops will be gone in a few decades. Yet we tax the thing that will be here forever instead of taxing the depleatable resource so as to conserve it for future generations.

The problem is the idea of not taxing fossil fuels and only taxing property, sales, income, social security and other, is such a strong paradigm, we can't make the change. Let's change the taxes that states have on sales taxes and more that to a fossil fuel sales tax. Don't pay it at the sales tax at the restautant or store product, but on the fossil fuel burned. We should do a tax trade.

The mistake S&N makes is that they think nothing can change, even our thinking. Well, they are wrong. Things can change, expecially our thinking. And it is the thing that has to change. Are there forces against it? Sure. But changing our thinking is the most important thing in the world.

by trock at 11:33 AM on 03 Oct 2007

Interview on KQED

I listened to an interview with S&N on KQED yesterday morning. Actually, it did not sound that bad, and they did say that we should not wait for the 'technological pony' (I liked that expression). They also suggested that government action is needed to make for example solar energy cheaper.

The interview can be downloaded from here. Maybe I should listen again.

by fermiparadox at 2:36 PM on 03 Oct 2007

Your debunking is bunk

"S&N's go-slow approach to climate, as first advanced in "The Death of Environmentalism," ...

Someone please explain what Romm means with this statement. I see in none of S&N's work an argument for a go-slow approach. I see in S&N's work a compelling argument for massively increasing and SPEEDING UP our investments in alternatives. Romm's critique smacks of someone whose ox has been gored; his supposed "debunking" confirms everything that S&N have been saying about our current environmental leaders. If anyone is holding up meaningful progress in addressing global warming, it is the Romms of the progressive movement.
Romm: do you or do you not support massive increases in investment in alternatives?
Do you support the buy down of alternative technologies through investment of the US government, just like the Dept of Defense did with both computer chips and the internet?
What proportion of major environmental groups funds,time and effort should be invested in LIMITS BASED SOLUTIONS and how much should be invested in INVESTMENT AND GROWTH BASED SOLUTIONS. Better yet, how much time and effort is the Center for American Progress spending on investment based initiatives, and how much is it spending on selling another Cap and Trade scheme. Further more, why has the Democratic-controlled Congress been so completely and totally lame in regards to the Apollo Project and other ambitious attempts to create non-limits based solutions to America's critical issues? That's the mystery here, and S&N are providing us some real answers. Answers, by the way, that point at the Romm's and Pope's of the environmental movement.
One additionl point: while there is certainly a role for a techological "reality check," the problems that S&N are trying to solve are the issues inherent in the environmental movement that prevents it from re-prioritizing growth and investments over limits.
Perhaps you could address these substantive issues before you begin the ad hominems.

by bearrain at 4:59 PM on 03 Oct 2007

Heinberg on vision

Joe,

I appreciate your depth of knowledge on climate change, but I am glad you are not "running U.S. climate policy."

I think you miss the essential point of S&N. That is, that the public will not accept easily the high energy prices that a price on carbon will bring. You ridicule a couple of sloppy sentences that are easy targets. But you seem to have no vision of your own (other than more of the same corporate-friendly government policy).

As well, you display little knowledge of energy depletion. Here a quote from Richard Heinberg that hints at what I'm getting at:

Addressing the economic, social, and political problems ensuing from the various looming peaks will require enormous collective effort. If it to be successful, that effort must be coordinated, presumably by government, and enlisting people in that effort will require educating and motivating them in numbers and at a speed that has not been seen since World War II. Part of that motivation must come from a positive vision of a future worth striving toward.

by Colin Wright at 7:59 PM on 03 Oct 2007

Put it this way

George Walker Bush's approach was "Voluntary Technology"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/view/ ...

Now how far did that get us?

-David Ahlport

by GreyFlcn at 8:49 PM on 03 Oct 2007

S&N and Lomborg: We are all to blame

Blaming S&N and Lomborg is futile. The activist community has allowed them to sidestep the urgency of drastic rapid reduction in energy consumption by echoing their claims that the public is not ready to accept higher energy prices or restrictive mandatory conservation and efficiency. As long as this mantra persists, those of us who know we must focus hard and immediately on curbing energy demand will be on the defensive. Meanwhile others besides them will pick up the same argument - that we must not disrupt our life style and behavior - and run with it. And like S&N&L we will be dismissed as unrealistic dreamers who want to completely redesign society. But of course that is PRECISELY what has to be done! Whatever the inconvenience, hardship, sacrifice, and cost, fiddling around at the margins or praying to the sun god for energy break-throughs is only hastening the economic break-down that is going to occur sooner than we think. Clearly we have failed to persuade even ordinary people of the emergency situation; when some of us parrot the pathetically poor
excuse for energy legislation in congress - 80% reduction in CO2 by 2050, we give citizens the signal that we DO have time to bring new technologies on line to avert catastrophe. This is a LETHAL LIE. We don't have the time. The scientists know it. Why aren't we getting our house in order and pushing for the radical reductions we know are needed in the coming decade? What are we afraid of? Being called un-American? Being called commies?

by lorna salzman at 11:57 AM on 15 Oct 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

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