Climate Change Roundtable

Foreign Policy In Focus recently published three different perspectives on the climate change crisis and what to do about it.

Proponents of a cautious approach to climate change warn of draconian restrictions. If we don't start now to reduce emissions, Hoff Stauffer argues in Is It Prudent to Wait?, we may well end up with those very same restrictions. Tom Athanasiou writes in The Inconvenient Truth Part II that the climate crisis comes to us on a deeply and bitterly unequal world and that the only way to tackle the problem successfully is to address the rich-poor issue head on. And, according to Pat Mooney in The Quick Fix Is In, some governments are gambling that the only way to deal with climate change is the massive restructuring of the earth.

Here the writers respond to each other's arguments. Also included is a critique of Pat Mooney's piece by William Coleman, of Planktos, Inc. and a response by Hope Shand, the research director of the ETC Group.

Hoff Stauffer

Tom Athanasiou is making the global warming problem seem more difficult than it is. He states that mitigating global warming will require inter alia "a real crash program," "a heroic effort," and "unprecedented domestic change ... [with] roiling and dislocation." The implication of these terms is that major changes in lifestyle would be required, particularly for the "rich" countries. As explained in my article, this is simply not true. Global climate change can be mitigated without major changes in lifestyle—if prudent and meaningful steps are taken right away. The notion that "draconian measures" would be required is an unfortunate misperception that has inhibited meaningful action.

This being the case, the distinction between the "rich" and the "South" is far less relevant. If the rest of the world adopted the mitigation strategy that I described and that relies heavily on reforestation, efficiency, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) on new coal-fired power plants, and biofuels (for an increasing portion of oil/gas consumption over time), the total global costs would be less than 0.4% of global gross domestic product (GDP). Importantly, the mitigation costs for the "rich" and the "South" would be very similar as a percentage of GDP. See Table below.

The "rich" can support the "South" by providing the technologies required to implement the mitigation strategies. But whether the "South" should have more support is open for discussion. Even with no additional support, the "South" need not make "the impossible choice between climate protection on the one hand and 'development' on the other." The costs of mitigation are not that great. The "South" could continue to grow in any event. Financial support from the "rich" would increase the rate of growth just a little bit, if it were not siphoned off by local corruption.

The costs of the reforestation and efficiency options are modest at most. Similarly, the costs of biofuels are likely to be modest at most and would provide economic growth opportunities in the "South." Hence, it is not clear that the "South" would need (or deserve) support for these options, and even if it did, it would not need much. However, CCS would increase the cost of electricity from a new coal-fired power plant by as much as 50%. Hence, there is room for discussion about whether and how to support the "South" on CCS.

Tom Athanasiou focused on per-capita emissions. I believe a better measure of international emissions equity is emissions per dollar GDP. The per-capita measure penalizes economic growth, since bigger economies have more emissions. Economic growth is good since it increases human welfare, in many ways. Emissions-per-dollar-GDP does not penalize economic growth but still captures the emissions efficiency of an economy.

The differences in emissions per capita and emissions per dollar GDP are currently material. But over time, with the mitigation strategy described above, these differences would diminish, particularly on the CO2 per dollar GDP measure. This finding is also driven by higher economic growth in the developing world and lower emissions growth in the developed world. Economic and emissions growth tend to slow with higher levels of income. See Tables below.

Most of the "South" has been quite clear that it intends to take no meaningful steps to mitigate global warming until the United States—the world's largest emitter (currently and cumulatively over time)—takes meaningful steps to reduce its own emissions. It is easy to understand why these countries take this position. I advocate that the United States adopt the mitigation strategy described above unilaterally. It is the right thing to do. The economic costs would be relatively insignificant. Then, we would have some moral leverage (at long last) to urge the rest of the world to do the same.

Finally, I believe we should be careful with our rhetoric about rich and poor or the "North" and the "South." If we are not careful, such rhetoric could feed the misperceptions that mitigating global warming requires major lifestyle changes of the "rich." Also, it may inhibit meaningful progress in the "South" if they delay action while waiting for handouts from the "rich." Some of the opposition to an adequate mitigation strategy comes from those who are vehemently opposed to global wealth/income redistribution. We need to minimize the opposition. The distribution of global wealth/income is an important issue, but it need not be and should not be linked to global warming.

I found Pat Mooney's piece to be both interesting and disturbing. I did not realize that such "geoengineering" is being seriously considered. Geoengineering is potentially replete with unintended consequences. Given the current state of knowledge, it is a very dangerous option—that fortunately is not needed now. Yet, we can keep it as a contingency option, in the event that climate change mitigation does not go as well as desired. And we can explore the geoengineering options carefully in the interim, so that if and when they are needed, the risks inherent in their use are minimal.

Clearly, Pat Mooney is correct: "Experimentation ... should not proceed without thorough and informed public debate ... and only with UN authorization."

Tom Athanasiou

The first thing I want to say to Hoff Stauffer is that I wish he were right.

Sure, I think economic justice is a good idea, and I readily admit that there's something in me that wants to conclude that it's going to be needed, in substantial measure, if we're to get our arms around the climate crisis. So when I reach just this conclusion, what's the great surprise? We all more easily believe what we want to believe, no?

But I'd still be happy if Stauffer was right. Because, frankly, I'm not so sure that we're going to rise to the coming occasion, and given the portents, a pragmatic program that would solve the energy problem at the root of the climate problem would clearly be a great step forward. I do not, however, believe that Stauffer's proposal fits this bill, for two reasons:

First, I don't accept Stauffer's target, in which the carbon-dioxide concentration is held to a peak of 475 parts per million. It may, to be sure, be more than William D. Nordhaus would countenance, but that doesn't make it safe. Moreover, my understanding—and I must confess that I'm not a scientist—is that the weight of the evidence supports my view. My chosen citation here is High Stakes, a recent study by Paul Baer, EcoEquity's research director. Following the current treatment of the key scientific uncertainties, he calculates that even a "crash program" that had global emissions peaking in 2010 and soon dropping at 5% a year (leading to concentrations peaking at about 410 ppm) would have a significant probability (9% to 26%) of raising global temperatures by more than 2°C. Stauffer's 475 trajectory, for its part, would have a much higher probability (something in the order of 50% to 90%) of doing the same, and a significant probability of yielding a much higher, much more dangerous, level of warming.

The debate here, esoteric though it may sound, is a crucial one. And it's perhaps not too much to say that, with the skeptics fading and the climate battle switching to politics and economics, my disagreement with Stauffer is a representative one. The party of the inconvenient truth, with which I (and most scientists) stand, is becoming increasingly vocal, while the "realists"—Stern is currently the most prominent among them, and Stauffer, while more forthright in his choice of a temperature target, is on the same side of the field—generally prefer to dilute the implications of the emerging science in an unthreatening, "non-draconian" solution of instrumental and technological initiatives.

Their motives for doing so are both honorable and easy to understand. Action must begin, big action on a big scale, and too much of the inconvenient truth, it is feared, will only stiffen the resolve of those who want to burrow yet again before waking to reality. In the face of such suicidal complacency, Stern and Stauffer are spinning the situation as they see best, and in a way I wish them luck. But their approach, I submit, is not the proper business of the climate movement. Even discounting the danger of extreme events—and there is no real justification for doing so—the "impacts" that would come with a temperature increase of over 2°C will be far too high, and far too terrible, and far too dangerous. And we in the rich world will not be those that suffer their greatest brunt.

Second, there is the matter of Stauffer's mitigation plan. And here I wish to say that while it has a lot to recommend it—its strong sectoral focus in particular—there are serious problems as well. And I'm not just thinking about his support for an ill-advised nuclear resurgence. The real issue is that his pragmatism is too strongly cast in a U.S.-centric mindset. Sure, it would be great if the United States were to adopt such a mitigation strategy. But as I tried to argue, any strategy that seeks to move forward by domestic action alone, while leaving in place the conditions of international deadlock, will be hobbled indeed. Stauffer knows (this is clear from back-channel email) that there would be international difficulties with his plan, though he only concedes that point with respect to deforestation. It's enough, however, to get the discussion started, for the "land-use policies that arrest and then reverse deforestation" that he advocates will not be easily won, not at all. His paper, however, does not say so, and by quoting Stern's estimate that "the average cost of avoiding and reversing deforestation would likely be about $5 per ton of CO2," it implies just the opposite.

The underlying issue here is that, when it comes to the threat of climate catastrophe, pragmatism and true realism are not at all the same. The problem is clear when it comes to the overarching international question—what set of institutions and incentives would drive and enable the developing world to move rapidly down such a path as the one that Stauffer recommends? On this question he is, alas, quite silent. When it comes, in particular, to the global version of the all-important "Who Pays?" question, his silence is resounding.

The real question, when considering Stauffer's proposal, or my proposal, or any proposal, is whether it abets the drive for a global crash program of decarbonization and sustainable development that is adequate to the scale of the challenge. And I'm afraid that Stauffer, despite his focus on the immediate and the practical, despite his solid sectoral approach and his emphasis on performance standards, is so eager to be non-draconian that he falls pretty short. His sense of the budget is too forgiving, and his contribution to the debate is far too focused on the domestic. So, in the end, and even though his proposals are useful, they do not take us where we need to go. We Americans, in particular, need to think far more seriously about the global impasse if we really want to do our part.

What would a true crash program imply? Well since we all respect Jim Hansen, let's take our guidance from him. "We have," Hansen says, "at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions." What this means, of course, is that Stauffer is absolutely right—it's not prudent to wait. But there's also a further implication: that we must take both his analysis and its limits with the seriousness they deserve.

To Pat Mooney, first of all, congrats for taking the trouble to write a thoughtful essay on geo-engineering. And his main point is a critical one: now that the power of the denialists is fading and the urgency of the situation becoming clear, the snake oil salesmen will be coming out in droves. Snake oil, after all, is as American as serial dieting. Both leverage our love of cheap optimism. And if the alternative to large-scale geo-engineering is large-scale social change, well, it's pretty obvious that the former is going to be more profitable, and more popular, at least in the short term.

That said, a few other things must also be said. One is that all kinds of geo-engineering are not created equal, especially not if we're going to use the term as broadly as Pat Mooney does. Cloud seeding and space mirrors and carbon sequestration are different cases, and sequestration in particular has more than one variant. Interesting though it may be to treat them all as merely parts of one crooked, delusional continuum, it's probably best not to allow our sense of the continuities to run away with us. For one thing, some approaches will not work, while others may. Also, and just as importantly, some approaches are likely to be extremely dangerous; others not so much. Given this, it's clear that differences matter. So, sure, the notion of a technological fix for global warming isn't new, but maybe a 1940s proposal for cloud seeding doesn't actually demonstrate that this is the case.

In all this we have to remember that we're facing a true planetary emergency, one in which differences matter a great deal. The difference between nuclear and other forms of low-carbon energy, for example, is a difference we're going to have to stress with renewed clarity if we want to derail the new push for nuclear. And the difference between terrestrial and oceanic sequestration, too, is one that we're going to have to appreciate, particularly if we're going to allow the possibility—as we must—that sequestration is a terrible idea we may desperately need, and not find ourselves thereby drawn to support mad schemes for oceanic carbon dumping.

The main point I'd like to make, though, is that the relationship between geoengineering and sequestration on the one hand and carbon trading is not as clear as Pat implies. This is the "soot and mirrors" question, and it's a crucial one, because—contrary to Pat's opening gambit, it's not enough to insist that "carbon trading is a farce." This is, to be sure, an easy claim to defend these days. Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism was designed to generate large amounts of cheap, low-quality carbon credits, and that's just what it's doing. And the EU's Trading System has been so warped by its bad implementation, with national governments grandfathering so many credits to their corporations that the system is stuttering at the edge of uselessness, that it's rapidly becoming a poster-child for self-defeating ineptitude.

But the real question that we face—what could possibly work?—isn't going to be answered by easy generalization. The truth, and it's actually fairly obvious, is that the way forward, when it comes to what climate wonks call "financial mechanisms," is a hybrid system that includes carbon trading and carbon taxes, as well as regulatory regimes strong enough to significantly redirect private capital flows, development funds, auctioning systems, trust funds designed to protect the public interest, and a whole lot more. In all this detail, the real question about trading is how to tell the difference between good and appropriate systems on the one hand and, on the other hand, Enronesque schemes that need to die as quickly and publicly as possible.

Anyway, I'm willing to be told that, right now, this sort of nuance doesn't matter. That, right now, the priority is to derail the geoengineering bandwagon, and to ensure that the institutions of climate protection—whatever they are—actually work. But from the larger perspective, the one in which we need a strategic vision for the way forward, the differences matter.

In any case, Pat's main point, that mad geoengineering and bad trading schemes are proliferating around us, is a great one. I would only add that we are in very serious trouble indeed, and that we have to concentrate on talking about that trouble in a useful way. This means, I think, that we have to rein in our desires to over-generalize. Will it work? Is it safe? Is it fair? Does it open the door to broader and more thoroughgoing change? These are the key questions, and if we answer them correctly we may never need to think very seriously about space mirrors or bioengineered plankton.

William Coleman

Pat Mooney's "policy article" suggesting that too many quick fixes have been proposed to address global warming contains information that is hugely myopic and ill informed. This is especially unfortunate as policy makers and the general public come to grips with new strategies necessary to avoid wholesale chaos in the face of global change.

Especially with respect to the health of the ocean, and to the interdependence of ocean-and-atmosphere, Mooney's rant against use of iron to fight global warming forgets to mention some startling basic facts: that iron micronutrients are a critical ingredient of ocean plankton productivity, that availability of iron in the open ocean is down by 25-30% in the past three decades (Steitz, Gregg 2003), and that plankton productivity has also diminished by an average of 15% worldwide (Gregg 2003, Behrenfeld 2007). This means that 3-5 billion tons of atmospheric CO2 are no longer being taken up via open-ocean photosynthesis—a substantial portion of the 6 billion tons of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions generated every year.

The loss of plankton productivity was discussed in the early 1990s (Hader et al 1991). It turns out that plankton make up half of the planet's primary productivity but, in the face of increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2—affecting ocean temperature, acidity, fertility, food production, and even the creation of oxygen generated to the atmosphere—plankton decline is a little know fact that has enormous implications for us all.

One leading ocean scientist incorrectly referenced by Mooney, Kenneth Coale, has inherited the legacy of pioneering researcher John Martin and has been one of the first to acknowledge that by mimicking the natural deposition of micronutrient iron to the ocean, ocean plankton productivity may be restored. Coale's colleagues Ken Johnson and Dave Karl have point by point refuted the arguments of other researchers (Science 296, 2002) who worry about the power of iron to stimulate plankton growth and explicitly get in the way of well meaning attempts to apply the results of their own research.

Iron enrichment is a very simple concept. Responsibly restoring parts per trillion of iron, at appropriate scale and in select locations of the open ocean, means that ocean ecosystems may be bolstered even in the face of continuing pressure brought on by mismanagement and global change. Restored plankton populations means, ultimately, more fish to feed hungry human populations at a time when fish protein is in diminishing per-capita supply (UNEP 2005).

With all that's at stake, isn't such politicking on the part of narrow-minded scientists more than a little out of line? Can't we take what has been learned and apply it to the benefit of human beings as well as other species? It doesn't take much to ensure that iron nutrient restoration is done responsibly: we must simply create stringent performance standards defining how this should be done, and include third-party observers to oversee measurement, monitoring, and reporting protocols. This same approach has been expressed as a partnership between government and the private sector, in land-based forests and across the world's croplands, for decades. The idea that we can't reasonably restore and manage the oceans is simply myopic heat-seeking rhetoric.

More to the point, the consequences of not trying are simply too dramatic. Policymakers have an obligation to consider any and all solutions that could contribute to the absolute about-face society must make as we face the twin hammers of climate change and ocean collapse.

Hope Shand, ETC Group

We don't dispute the fact that iron fertilization stimulates plankton growth. Over the past 15 years iron fertilization experiments in the ocean have shown that iron increases phytoplankton productivity and biomass over periods of a few days to weeks. However, scientific experiments have not documented or verified a net transfer of CO2 from the atmosphere to the deep ocean. We agree with Coleman that phytoplankton decline is a serious problem. But commercial-scale ocean fertilization is not a safe or viable approach for restoring plankton or for carbon sequestration. If carbon trading provides an incentive for industrial entrepreneurs like Planktos to fertilize the ocean with iron particles, the cumulative effects could be disastrous for ocean ecology. Profit-driven fertilization of the oceans is inherently uncontrollable, and it will likely create a new ecological disaster.

William Coleman writes that we have incorrectly referenced Kenneth Coale, Director of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, one of the scientists who have participated in iron fertilization experiments. We spoke to Kenneth Coale by telephone, and we do not believe that we have misrepresented or incorrectly referenced him. In fact, Coale indicated to us that Planktos has a habit of misrepresenting the involvement of scientists with the company's iron enrichment schemes.

Planktos claims that it will be the first commercial operation to restore plankton productivity by enriching "patches" of the open ocean with nutrient iron. The company has acquired a ship and will undertake a commercial pilot project in the Pacific Ocean in March or April 2007 (either near Hawaii or French Polynesia.) We are especially alarmed by Planktos' assertion that they will use nano-scale particles of iron for ocean fertilization (that is, tiny particles that are measured on the scale of billionths of meters). The impacts of large-scale environmental release of nano-scale iron particles are unknown, untested, and completely unregulated. In 2004, the United Kingdom's Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering recommended that the use of free nanoparticles in environmental applications (such as remediation of groundwater) be prohibited.

William Coleman writes: "Can't we take what has been learned and apply it to the benefit of human beings as well as other species?" Good idea. We have only to look at last week's news to be reminded of the folly of ocean dumping. In 1972, some scientists recommended that millions of tires be dumped in the ocean to create artificial reefs to attract marine life and free up space in landfills. The tire reefs turned out to be "a huge ecological blunder"—the tires have devastated marine life, polluted oceans and beaches, and are now costing millions of dollars in clean-up costs.

Carbon credits for ocean fertilization schemes should be prohibited. Instead of new ocean dumping schemes, we must urgently reduce consumption of fossil fuels and CO2 emissions at the source. Ocean fertilization or other geoengineering schemes that have the potential to alter the structure of the oceans or the stratosphere should not proceed without informed public debate on its consequences, and UN authorization.