Combating climate change The problems with James Hansen’s fee and dividend proposal

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Hansen has been proposing fee and dividend as a means to curtail fossil fuel use and draw down carbon in order to prevent catastrophic climate change—a very real prospect that is looming ever closer. He has advocated the plan as an alternative to marketbased carbon trading and offsets, which are nothing more than licenses to pollute, and phony accounting schemes that commodify Earth’s carbon-storage ca­ pacity while traders and brokers profit from ecologi­ cal disaster.

If you cook the books, you’re only going to cook the planet because such projects have not reduced green­ house gas emissions by one single jot. Since the sign­ ing of the Kyoto Protocol, which was based entirely on carbon trading, thanks to Al Gore’s intervention on behalf of the Clinton administration, the situation has only gotten steadily worse, with none of the advanced nations making their emission-reduction goals. At Co­ penhagen in 2009, the worthless agreement was es­ sentially scrapped altogether.

The mean global surface temperature of the planet has already risen 0.8 C since the Industrial Revolution. If it rises by 2 C, there will be a cascade of planetary tipping points that will speed Earth toward climate catastrophe. Scientists believe that one “climate dom­ ino” has already fallen and will begin toppling others. That would be the Arctic sea ice, which “flipped” into instability in 2007 and has been undergoing the per­ manent loss of its thick, multi-year ice ever since.

The next stage in the process is expected to be the Yedoma—the vast expanse of Siberian permafrost. Once it begins to thaw on a large scale, it will release enormous amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) as microbes break down organic mat­ ter in the thawing soils. This will lead to an amplifying feedback that will add to the blanket of gases that are warming the planet and in turn, melt more ice, adding to sea level rise.

The sediments of the seafloor on the Arctic conti­ nental shelf are already releasing huge plumes of CH4 from thawing methane hydrates. Action should have been taken at once 25 years ago to reduce emissions from fossil fuel combustion, yet it’s been business as usual ever since Hansen announced before Congress and the world in 1988 that the planet was warming.

Considerably modified, Hansen’s fee and dividend idea has been incorporated into a bill in the U.S. Sen­ ate that was unveiled by Senators Boxer and Sanders prior to the successful Feb. 17 Forward on Climate demonstration of 50,000. The action was co-orga­ nized by Bill McKibben’s 350, the Sierra Club, and the Hip Hop Caucus.

The plan is designed to eventually wean our soci­ ety off of its fossil fuel addiction. It would impose a 6 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 2013 in the U.S. Senate. 10 years. The system is also supposed to spur inno­ vation among entrepreneurs to develop more energyefficient products and cleaner technologies. Oddly, there is no provision for any dividend funds being set aside for the development of renewable energy. Continued fossil fuel use The major problem with Hansen’s proposal is that it assumes the continued use of fossil fuels, especially conventional oil and gas. He believes those reserves will gradually decline based on current estimates of “peak oil.” Although he has warned that “it’s game over for the climate” if we continue to use extreme forms of carbon-intensive energy such as tar sands bitumen, deepwater petroleum (especially from the Arctic), and shale oil and gas, he assumes that it’s okay to use up the remaining conventional fossil carbon reservoirs. This means that we would not only still be generating massive amounts of greenhouse gases, but also perpetuating the destructive car/truck culture.

To prop up the wretched transportation system, he proposes a linear phase-in of polluting liquid biofuels of low-input and high-diversity as a substitute for pe­ troleum-based gasoline—with no mention whatsoev­ er of clean mass transit. This is entirely unacceptable.

Viewing coal combustion as the single greatest threat to civilization, Hansen calls for a moratorium on the construction of new coal-fired power plants, leading to their eventual phase-out, except in cases where carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) tech­ nologies can be employed. There is actually no such thing as “clean coal” by way of CCS, so we can forget about that. Plus, the possibility of catastrophic releas­ es of carbon dioxide from deep geologic storage or its migration underground into water tables are all too real, making it a completely impractical alternative.

In 2008, when he originally presented his concept at a congressional briefing as a substitute for coalfired electrical generation, Hansen called for a switch to natural gas, using up to 50% of the remaining con­ ventional gas supplies. Coal-fired electrical generation has since fallen to 34% due to its replacement with natural gas. The drop in price of natural gas due to the “shale gale” has made this conversion possible. It is safe to assume that a significant portion of the shale gas being produced goes to electrical generation although no hard data seem to be available on that. Given the environmental devastation caused by hy­ drofracturing, switching from coal to gas has not been that beneficial overall. In fact, the fracking of natural gas emits more carbon than coal combustion because of all the accidental leaking and purposeful venting of methane!

Hansen also advocates the creation of a national, low-loss “smart” grid, while ignoring the benefits of locally-produced and distributed wind and solar pow­ (continued on page 7, in “Considerably modified, Hansen’s idea has been incorporated into a bill”)