World Cup Exclusion as Pollution Punishment? It Won’t Work

Finally, a story that connects my two passions: climate change and soccer.

International climate talks in Bonn, German are coming to an end “with recriminations about scant progress.” According to Reuters environment blog, “[S]ome delegates have been more agitated talking about the Euro 2008 soccer than about the threats to the planet.”

But Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists has a novel idea to get the delegates to focus:

If countries don’t comply [with emission targets] their teams shouldn’t be allowed to go to the World Cup.

Unfortunately, the plan is doomed from the start. Neither of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters–the U.S. and China–are soccer nations. Meyer’s proposal would provide zero motivation for either one to reach their emission targets.

No doubt, this World Cup punishment would disproportionately hurt countries in Europe and Latin America, where the Beautiful Game is an obsession.

(Clearly I’m taking this idea WAY too seriously…)

World Cup Exclusion as Pollution Punishment? It Won’t Work

Finally, a story that connects my two passions: climate change and soccer.

International climate talks in Bonn, German are coming to an end “with recriminations about scant progress.” According to Reuters environment blog, “[S]ome delegates have been more agitated talking about the Euro 2008 soccer than about the threats to the planet.”

But Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists has a novel idea to get the delegates to focus:

If countries don’t comply [with emission targets] their teams shouldn’t be allowed to go to the World Cup.

Unfortunately, the plan is doomed from the start. Neither of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters–the U.S. and China–are soccer nations. Meyer’s proposal would provide zero motivation for either one to reach their emission targets.

No doubt, this World Cup punishment would disproportionately hurt countries in Europe and Latin America, where the Beautiful Game is an obsession.

(Clearly I’m taking this idea WAY too seriously…)

$45 Trillion: That’s a LOT of Green

The International Energy Agency’s new report on the amount of investment needed ($45 trillion!!!) to combat climate change AND keep economic growth humming along has made quite the splash. IEA director Nobuo Tanaka doesn’t sugarcoat the difficulties we face:

Mr. Tanaka said the world would “essentially require a new global energy revolution which would completely transform the way we produce and use energy.”

The report said carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology will have to be part of the solution:

To reach the goal of halving emissions, it said, among the most important measures would be equipping more than 50 gas and coal power plants each year with equipment to capture and sequester carbon dioxide.

Trouble is, the amount of investment into bringing the CCS process to market is “lagging badly.” Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at Berkeley, said about CCS development: “It’s a total mess.”

And no doubt it will be an expensive mess. From the Wall Street Journal:

If clean-energy technologies – like “clean-coal” power plants that would bury CO2 emissions underground – don’t develop as smoothly as optimists hope, the cost of cutting emissions could be a lot higher: think $500 per ton, according to the IEA.

$45 Trillion: That’s a LOT of Green

The International Energy Agency’s new report on the amount of investment needed ($45 trillion!!!) to combat climate change AND keep economic growth humming along has made quite the splash. IEA director Nobuo Tanaka doesn’t sugarcoat the difficulties we face:

Mr. Tanaka said the world would “essentially require a new global energy revolution which would completely transform the way we produce and use energy.”

The report said carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology will have to be part of the solution:

To reach the goal of halving emissions, it said, among the most important measures would be equipping more than 50 gas and coal power plants each year with equipment to capture and sequester carbon dioxide.

Trouble is, the amount of investment into bringing the CCS process to market is “lagging badly.” Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at Berkeley, said about CCS development: “It’s a total mess.”

And no doubt it will be an expensive mess. From the Wall Street Journal:

If clean-energy technologies – like “clean-coal” power plants that would bury CO2 emissions underground – don’t develop as smoothly as optimists hope, the cost of cutting emissions could be a lot higher: think $500 per ton, according to the IEA.

The Goracle Speaks

“While it’s important that people change their light bulbs, it’s even more important that we change the laws.”

–Al Gore, discussing the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act now being debated in the Senate.

The Goracle Speaks

“While it’s important that people change their light bulbs, it’s even more important that we change the laws.”

–Al Gore, discussing the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act now being debated in the Senate.

Club for Growth Goes on the Attack

The Club for Growth, a conservative a group that isn’t afraid to attack anyone who stray from radical free-market ideology, is running $250,000 worth of negative ads against the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.

The group’s president, Pat Toomey, claims Lieberman-Warner would be “extremely destructive to economic growth.” (He must not have read the recent EPA study that found the bill “could be implemented without significantly harming the nation’s economic growth over the next two decades.”)

The Hill recently reported that conservative climate deniers have concluded the “argument against climate controls is easier when focused on the economic costs instead of science.” And it’s no surprise that the Club for Growth would take this line of argument—denying humanity’s impact on our atmosphere is so 1990s.

Don’t expect the fight to simmer down anytime soon. The economic “modeling wars” will continue as the Senate inches toward a vote on Lieberman-Warner.

But here’s what’s not up for debate–the catastrophic costs of doing nothing.

A new study from Tufts University only confirms this:

Doing nothing about global warming would cost the United States dearly for the rest of this century because of stronger hurricanes, higher energy and water costs, and rising seas that would swamp coastal areas…

The Tufts study found that by 2100, annual costs would be $422 billion in hurricane damage, $360 billion in real estate losses (with the biggest risk on the Atlantic and gulf coasts, particularly Florida), $141 billion in increased energy costs and $950 billion in water costs, especially in the West. …

That adds up to an annual loss by 2100 of 1.8% of gross domestic product, the sum of the nation’s output of goods and services.

And these calculations aren’t all-inclusive:

Frank Ackerman, an economist at Tufts and one of the study’s main authors, said the impact of climate change actually would be worse than what his numbers showed “because of the human lives and ecosystems that will be lost and species that will be driven into extinction — all these things transcend monetary values.”

Club for Growth Goes on the Attack

The Club for Growth, a conservative a group that isn’t afraid to attack anyone who stray from radical free-market ideology, is running $250,000 worth of negative ads against the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.

The group’s president, Pat Toomey, claims Lieberman-Warner would be “extremely destructive to economic growth.” (He must not have read the recent EPA study that found the bill “could be implemented without significantly harming the nation’s economic growth over the next two decades.”)

The Hill recently reported that conservative climate deniers have concluded the “argument against climate controls is easier when focused on the economic costs instead of science.” And it’s no surprise that the Club for Growth would take this line of argument—denying humanity’s impact on our atmosphere is so 1990s.

Don’t expect the fight to simmer down anytime soon. The economic “modeling wars” will continue as the Senate inches toward a vote on Lieberman-Warner.

But here’s what’s not up for debate–the catastrophic costs of doing nothing.

A new study from Tufts University only confirms this:

Doing nothing about global warming would cost the United States dearly for the rest of this century because of stronger hurricanes, higher energy and water costs, and rising seas that would swamp coastal areas…

The Tufts study found that by 2100, annual costs would be $422 billion in hurricane damage, $360 billion in real estate losses (with the biggest risk on the Atlantic and gulf coasts, particularly Florida), $141 billion in increased energy costs and $950 billion in water costs, especially in the West. …

That adds up to an annual loss by 2100 of 1.8% of gross domestic product, the sum of the nation’s output of goods and services.

And these calculations aren’t all-inclusive:

Frank Ackerman, an economist at Tufts and one of the study’s main authors, said the impact of climate change actually would be worse than what his numbers showed “because of the human lives and ecosystems that will be lost and species that will be driven into extinction — all these things transcend monetary values.”

A San Francisco Treat

Carbon-emitting companies in San Francisco will soon have to pay to pollute, albeit not much. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Jumping ahead of state and federal regulators, the Bay Area air quality district became the first in the nation on Wednesday to impose fees on businesses that pump some of the highest levels of carbon dioxide into the air each year.

The 15-1 vote by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District sets the stage for 2,500 companies and agencies – from supermarkets to gas stations to power plants – to pay 4.4 cents for every metric ton of carbon dioxide they expel, beginning July 1. The top 10 companies combined would pay more than $820,000. The fee for a large share of businesses would be less than $1.

It’s a relatively small step, but it’s an important one. And it couldn’t come at a better time, as the Energy Department recently announced that total carbon dioxide emissions have increased 1.6 percent over the past year.

What’s really needed is a nation-wide mechanism–such as cap-and-trade or a carbon tax. Nibbling around the edges in certain cities and states just won’t get the job done.

A San Francisco Treat

Carbon-emitting companies in San Francisco will soon have to pay to pollute, albeit not much. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Jumping ahead of state and federal regulators, the Bay Area air quality district became the first in the nation on Wednesday to impose fees on businesses that pump some of the highest levels of carbon dioxide into the air each year.

The 15-1 vote by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District sets the stage for 2,500 companies and agencies – from supermarkets to gas stations to power plants – to pay 4.4 cents for every metric ton of carbon dioxide they expel, beginning July 1. The top 10 companies combined would pay more than $820,000. The fee for a large share of businesses would be less than $1.

It’s a relatively small step, but it’s an important one. And it couldn’t come at a better time, as the Energy Department recently announced that total carbon dioxide emissions have increased 1.6 percent over the past year.

What’s really needed is a nation-wide mechanism–such as cap-and-trade or a carbon tax. Nibbling around the edges in certain cities and states just won’t get the job done.