Opinion/Editorial

Here's a little known secret. Environmental activists here and abroad don't really care about global warming.

The amount of carbon in the atmosphere is increasing steadily, and burning fossil fuels contributes to that trend. Doing something to alter that trend is apparently issue number one for environmental activists.

For all of their words, however, their actions don't match that goal.

This may come as a surprise, especially here in Seattle where Mayor Greg Nickels has made leadership on climate change a central part of his administration and given the amount of money the City of Seattle and others are spending on the issue.

Take, for example, Mayor Nickels' recent plan to reduce carbon emissions in Seattle and meet the Kyoto targets in 2012. He pledges to spend $37 million in the first two years and millions more after that to achieve that goal. The total budget is likely to amount to $21 to $42 for every ton of carbon emissions reduced.

The numbers are impressive, but the high cost betrays an uncomfortable fact – reducing carbon emissions is not the real goal. If it were, the City of Seattle could go to established organizations like the Oregon Climate Trust, a group recently praised by members of the Seattle City Council, which charges only $10 per ton of carbon emissions reduced. Better yet, they could go to the Chicago Climate Exchange where carbon credits cost only $4 per ton.

These groups support programs that reduce carbon emissions elsewhere to offset carbon emissions in Seattle. If officials were serious about global warming, they could reduce carbon emissions far more by supporting programs like these rather than funding public works projects that cost 10 times what these effective efforts could produce.

That's not the only example.

Seattle and Washington state politicians loudly support "green building standards" like those in Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED). The premise of these standards, adopted by Washington state and Seattle in some form, is that paying a little more up front on environmentally friendly energy systems in new buildings, will reduce energy use later. In a number of cases, however, buildings have actually used more energy than the buildings they replaced. The City of Seattle claimed the new city hall would use less energy than the previous, smaller building. In fact, it uses significantly more.

A "green" school in Tacoma spent 25% more on energy in its first year than a comparable non-"green" school built at the same time in the same district.

One proponent of such standards admitted that "the certification process doesn't audit actual performance of the building or how much energy it really uses.”

The reaction of environmental activists at these examples is illustrative. Instead of demanding improvements so that CO2 reduction goals are met, they defend the failed standards.

The gap between words and actions has caught the attention of some. One activist quoted in the essay “The Death of Environmentalism,” argues that environmentalists need to convince people that “action is needed on global warming and not on some ulterior goal.” However, that same essay, written by lifelong environmental activists, argues that global warming is a problem “having to do with how we organize our society.” That “ulterior” goal of societal transformation undermines rational efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Solutions that reduce carbon emissions but do not take steps toward that transformation are shunned.

That was made obvious recently in Europe. Energy producers who reduce carbon emissions may sell credits to others who exceed the emission cap. In Britain, energy firms earned 1 billion pounds ($1.88 billion) from such trading. Instead of celebrating this confluence of environmental responsibility and profit motive, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) called for a “windfall tax” on that profit.

The WWF’s discomfort with “profit” outweighs their concern about global warming. The allocation of such windfalls may be unequal, but a tax only reduces the profit and, therefore, the incentive of companies to take actions that create the profit, like reducing carbon emissions.

That’s not the only example. In Washington state, green power advocates actively oppose our largest source of renewable energy that emits no carbon – hydro power. On the other hand they supported efforts to count other renewable energy sources an extra 20% toward required targets if the project was built using union apprentices. Such efforts again blur the goal and raise questions about their commitment to reducing carbon emissions.

Every week there are complaints by environmental activists that we are not taking global warming seriously. The gap between their words and actions, however, blurs their commitment to the issue and undermines their credibility. Until those activists are willing to take actions that are effective, we have to wonder whether they really care about reducing carbon emissions or are simply using the issue to achieve an ulterior goal.