Deep Thoughts

Yesterday was a big event at the Sierra Club. Al Gore was in the house, along with some other deep thinkers on climate issues. In the morning and throughout the day, they sat down to hash out a near-term action agenda on climate change. At a panel discussion held afterward at the nearby Commonwealth Club, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope explained that the point was not to come up with hypothetical solutions based on some 30-year timeline but rather to determine what needs to happen in the next two to three years.

The panel was moderated by Pope and, in addition to Vice President Gore, included: Stanford climatologist, Dr. Stephen Schnieder; Duke Energy Chairman, Paul Anderson; President of New Energy Capital, Dan Reicher; Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Vinod Khosla; and California Senator Barbara Boxer, who will chair the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) in the 110th Congress, replacing Oklahoma Sen. Jim "Global-Warming-is-all-a-big-hoax" Inhofe. In the end, each of the panelists spoke about some facet of the problem of climate change and the immediate ways in which we must address the challenge.

Sitting in the overflow gallery, I scribbled notes. I'll share some of the highlights here, broken down by speaker:

Senator Boxer spoke first. She said she believed climate has finally come to the fore as an issue and that the growing concern among voters on the issue was reflected in the outcome of the mid-terms. However, she warns that there is still much resistance in Washington, as evidenced not only in Inhofe's final hearing on climate change (in which he accused the media of alarmism), but also by the selection of coal-state Senators, Larry Craig and Craig Thomas, to seats on the EPW Committee. (Both Senators get zero percent on the League of Conservation Voters' environmental scorecard). That said, she believes there is room for common ground for the simple reason that, even if global warming turned out not to be a threat of the magnitude we believe it to be, the measures we took to combat it would all be good things for the nation -- in terms of increased energy independence, new business opportunities, cleaner air and water, improved public health, etc.

Paul Anderson followed Senator Boxer. The Duke Energy Chairman, followed up on a remark by Carl Pope that history will be divided into BC and AC for "before carbon controls" and "after carbon controls." Anderson said he preferred to think in terms of costs than controls, noting that while a lot of the world might respond to greater moral good, business doesn't. What leaders in the energy business want to know, then, is: Is my power plant going to be an asset or a liability? As such, he said, government needs to start sending clear signals to the marketplace about what regulation is coming and then act quickly to implement it. As long as there is uncertainty, he said, there is no incentive for business to enact controls. In fact, there may be incentive to increase emissions if there's a possibility that caps would be set based on pre-control emission levels, a situation he likened to musical chairs. "When the music stops and you need a chair, you want the highest one in the room." Anderson said he would like to see the government adopt a carbon tax that would apply to everybody and be "free of political mischief."

Not being entirely sure what he meant by that, I did some further research and came up with this statement Anderson made in the Australian press last year:

I think that the best way to address it [carbon emissions] is with a very broad-based approach that leaves you with no regrets. In my view, a preferred approach would be something like a carbon tax or a carbon fee that would be applied across all fuels and so therefore you would have different fees depending on the carbon intensity of the fuel, but you don't create winners and losers, you merely create economic incentives for fuel choices and economic incentives for conservation and technology development...

Vinod Khosla followed Anderson. He focused on scalability, stressing that "if we solve 10 percent of a problem, we haven't really solved anything." With apologies to proponents of the technology, he went on to characterize both solar photovoltaics and wind as 10 percent solutions, given the current limitations of battery technology. "We need to replace all of our coal, all of our oil and all of our plastics," Khosla said, adding that for the solution to be scalable, it has to be cheaper than the existing technology. As a "free-market Republican" he said he wants government to enact long-term, stable energy policies that will attract more Wall Street investment and require less government interference. Khosla said his personal goal for 2007 is to convince investors in the energy sector that it is simply too risky to build a coal-fired power plant given looming carbon costs. On the other hand, he said, from a venture capitalist's point-of-view, the risks involved in fostering carbon neutral alternatives to coal are "modest to moderate."

Dan Reicher was up next. The former Energy Department staffer and venture capitalist told a story about visiting the Google campus in Silicon Valley. It was a sunny day, and Reicher asked his hosts, 'Wouldn't it be a good idea to have solar cells on the rooftops here?' And they all said enthusiastically that it would be. He surprised them by saying that, actually, that would be foolish, since inside the building they had thousands of inefficient light bulbs wasting energy. The smart thing to do would be to change the lighting. Then, if you want to put solar panels in, you wouldn't need as much capacity. He said this is basically Amory Lovins' idea of "negawatts." It's the low-hanging fruit, he said, adding that, "The low-hanging fruit grows back." It's not a one-time deal. Take, for example, compact fluorescent lighting. Well, once you've replaced your incandescents with CFLs, that's just the beginning. In a few years, you can replace your CFLs with LEDs and get even more energy savings. Reicher said that while the technology to increase efficiency is ready and financial institutions are on board, ready to invest millions, the thing that needs to happen now is "we need put a price tag on carbon." Reicher ended with what he admitted was a Pollyanish thought: He said President Bush could still come around on climate change.

Stephen Schneider began his remarks by noting that he and Al Gore had been "soldiering on the same side of the issue for 25 years," and that while that might seem cause for despair, it hadn't been a waste as the world was very different than it used to be. "Who could have imagined that the biggest radical on this panel would come from a power company," he said, looking toward Paul Anderson. "Now, that's progress." Schneider says the US has lots of climate policy, just not at the federal level. As proof that policy makes a big difference, just contrast California and Texas. California has the lowest emissions. Texas the highest. The change is possible, he said, but "you have to mandate it." "We're poised to make a difference."

And then came Al Gore...