California’s Suite Music
It’s Thursday of the second week of the climate negotiations in Bali, which is the traditional day to reach agreement–or not–at the international global warming negotiations. But do not confuse an agreement–if there is one, and there almost certainly will be–with a solution. A Bali roadmap may be a great accomplishment, but not a solution, nor will it lead to one. A solution is what is desperately needed–and there is one place in the world where it can be found–because the peril posed by global warming is far more grave and imminent than all but a few realize.
One of the great flaws in the negotiations process is that policies are developed on science as expounded by the 2,000 participants in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It, in turn, reaches its conclusions considering only studies published in “peer reviewed” literature, meaning they have been scrutinized closely by expert scientists. This means the science elaborated by the IPCC is rock solid, but three to five years old, so when negotiators from throughout the world gather annually to craft policies, they may be utterly ignorant of the newest science, even if has profound implications. That is certainly the case in Bali.
In the last five years, thanks in part to improved super computers and new information, but also due to the inspiration of some, scientists looking for answers to troubling and unexplained environmental changes, serious shortcomings in the assumptions on which the negotiating process is based have been revealed.
First, scientists knew that a variety of pollutants excluded from the Kyoto Protocol–tropospheric ozone, or smog, for example, and carbon monoxide the colorless, odorless gas emitted by every tailpipe and smokestack–cause global warming. But because they had short lifetimes–meaning they are destroyed by a variety of chemical reactions in the atmosphere or by other means–they were thought to be much less important than the so-called “long lived” gases. But in fact, it is now clear the majority of today’s warming is due to these short-lived pollutants.
Second, some pollutants were not then known to be significant causes of warming. Black carbon, like the soot emitted by diesels, for example was not seriously considered for inclusion in the Protocol. It now turns out, however, that it is a major cause of warming, especially where it darkens snow and ice, thus increasing the absorption of sunlight. Moreover, black carbon now appears to not only cause melting by warming areas like Greenland, Alaska and Siberia, but also by actually changing the way that snow melts, accelerating the process. This may account for the fact that while warming in the Arctic is roughly what computer models predict, melting is much, much faster, perhaps twice the speed of predictions.
Third, some pollutants and sources were excluded from coverage because, in theory, they are subject to other international agreements, but also because the true magnitude of their contribution to global warming was not accurately known. Ships, for example, are excluded. But recent estimates place are that they account not for a small amount of pollution, but an immense quantity: between 15 and 30 percent of global emissions of oxides of nitrogen, a pollutant that helps form smog, for example. Indeed emissions from ships are roughly equal to those of the continent of either Europe or North America. Aircraft are also excluded, even though they injects immense amounts of carbon where it can be most dangerous, at high altitudes and over the Arctic.
Negotiators also left chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the industrial chemicals like DuPont’s Freons that destroy stratospheric ozone, out of global warming coverage, supposedly because they were subject to another international regime, the Montreal Protocol to Protect the Ozone Layer. Chemicals subject to Montreal are regulated, however, solely to address their impacts on stratospheric ozone. As a result, the chemical–again, one made by DuPont–now used as a chilling agent in the air conditioners of cars and trucks was allowed on the market as a CFC replacement even though it was known at the time to be a powerful cause of global warming.
Perhaps worst of all, the true atmospheric lifetime of the chemical that will be the single largest contributor to global warming, carbon dioxide–created when carbon-rich fuels like coal, oil and wood are burned–was greatly underestimated. Although there was some uncertainty as to CO2′s lifetime, there was a consensus that one century was about right. Instead, it is now known that after even 1,000 years, one third of CO2 being emitted now will still be in the system.
The upshot of this miscalculation of CO2′s lifetime is that even if emissions were to cease this instant, it would be over a century before the full cooling benefit would be realized. These are grim realities, but as is often the case, there are solutions, if only policy-makers will address them.
Because the lifetimes of the short-lived pollutants range from a few days to weeks to a few years, reducing them can produce near-term cooling. HFC-134a, the DuPont chemical used in car air conditioners, has 3,400 times the warming power of CO2 on a molecule-to-molecule basis, and a lifetime of about 12 to 15 years. Thus, if the entire world were to ban use of the chemical in automotive air conditioners, as Europe is doing starting in 2011, there would be cooling benefit before children born today graduated from high school.
For the other short-lived pollutants that cause global warming, the health payback would be immense. Black carbon kills and ozone both kills and causes asthma. The global annual total surely is in the hundreds of thousands of deaths and tens of millions of illnesses. Reduce them, and needless sickness and death would be avoided–and reduce them we must.
The Earth is approaching–some believe it may have already passed–a half dozen tipping points. These are infinitesimally small changes that trigger sudden, often violent and irreversible change–think avalanche, lighting strikes and the Twin Towers, standing, standing, standing, then in seconds collapsing into immense heaps of rubble.
Because of the extended delay from the development of science until its restatement by the IPCC, none of these considerations is before negotiators in Bali. But one government in the world has considered these facts, then adopted the most comprehensive, multifaceted and aggressive program to combat global warming in the world. That government, which will come as no surprise to many, is California..
It was in California that the link between cars and smog was first established, where the first pollution control technologies were mandated and the first statewide regulatory program for air pollution was installed. It was California that gave birth to solar photovoltaic cells to generate electricity from sunlight, where turbines to generate electricity were installed in huge numbers and where the most aggressive and effective energy conservation requirements in the world were developed.
After reviewing new science and examining what regulations and new technologies could achieve, the California legislature adopted not one law, but an entire suite. (They are listed below.) They deal with the near, mid and long term; cover transportation, electricity generation, and industrial processes as well as residential and commercial activities. They require reductions right away–“early actions,” they’re called–and other cuts that must be the “maximum technologically feasible, cost effective” reductions.
They encourage the deployment of solar and wind power, and the adoption of new, tougher conservation requirements. They require reductions in not only carbon dioxide and the other pollutants covered by international global warming law, but also black carbon, ozone and its precursors and the industrial chemicals like DuPont’s 134a.
There are some gaps in the California Suite, but the legislature is working to close them, so that when they are finished the final product will be a solution–not just agreement. To see the California Suite become the symphony played worldwide would be, pardon the pun, sweet music indeed.
California Leads the Way to a Post-Kyoto World
With New Laws
2002
AB 1493 required reduced emissions of greenhouse gases from cars and light trucks.
2006
AB 32 requires—
+ “maximum technologically achievable and cost-effective” emission reductions;
+ reductions in emissions of all pollutants that cause global warming, not just those listed under the Kyoto Protocol;
+ implementation by January 1, 2010 of “discrete early actions” to reduce emissions;
+ adoption of “market-based compliance mechanisms” measures, which may include taxes, feebates, auctions and other approaches, as well as trading;
+ return to 1990 emission levels by 2010; and,
+ implementation to be by the state’s air pollution control agency, the California Air Resources Board.
SB 1 establishes goals of—
+ installing 3,000 megawatts solar generation capacity;
+ establishing a self-sufficient solar industry; and,
+ placing photovoltaic (PV) systems on 50 percent of new homes in 13 years.
SB 107 requires retail sellers of electricity to procure at least 20 percent of their retail sales from renewable power by 2010.
SB 1368 prohibits investment in new baseload capacity, or new or renewed contracts with a term of five or more years, unless the electricity is as clean as that from a modern, state-of-the-art powerplant.
AB 2021 requires the state to save 30,000 gigawatthours (GWh) of electricity over 10 years through energy efficiency measures.
AB 2778 extends the Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP), which provides financial incentives to generating electricity with wind power and fuel cells.
Vetoed By Governor Schwarzenegger
SB 757 would have required state agencies to take every “cost-effective and technologically feasible action” to reduce the growth of petroleum demand and increase vehicle energy efficiency and the use of alternative fuels.
SB 927 would have imposed a $30 fee on each cargo container entering the Ports of Long Beach or Los Angeles to pay for reducing air pollution while improving security and rail transport.
AB 1012 would have required that starting in 2020, one-half of all new passenger and light-duty trucks, to be “clean alternative vehicles”, running on at least 50 percent non-petroleum fuel.
