Senator Sanders' carbon tax proposal

Sigh… So Senators Sanders and Boxer have come out with proposed legislation for a carbon tax — which sounds like great progress, but turns out to be just another measure of how far we have to go to face reality. To begin with, the ostensible goal of the proposal is to decrease carbon emissions 80% by 2050. This might have been a worthwhile goal a few years (or decades) ago, but the effects of warming are so fast outpacing the projections it is now clear that 80% by 2050 is not even close to what is truly necessary (more on that in a later post).

But even if the goal were enough, there are two huge problems with this proposal. First, the price for carbon is set at $20/ton initially, rising to $35/ton over 10 years. This is practically guaranteed to have virtually no effect. Just think about it — we know that a cross-country roundtrip flight spews the equivalent of 2 tons of carbon per passenger, so this would add a big $40.00 to the price of that roundtrip ticket! (even if all of those emissions were fairly counted, which they usually are not). Is that really going to keep anyone from flying? I understand the airlines have been tacking on that much just in luggage fees and whatnot lately — I haven't read of a huge drop in air travel because of it. There is also a really easy conversion factor for car travel: dollars/ton of carbon approximately equals cents/gallon of gas — so that $20/ton will add about 20 cents per gallon. Excuse me, but — big deal! The price of gas fluctuates more than that, all the time, with little effect on driving (how many folks do you think would stop driving to work if gas went up a measly 20 cents?). Getting an 80% cutback is going to take pricing carbon orders of magnitude higher than that.

The second big problem, of course, is that this is not a real carbon fee-and-dividend proposal, it is a carbon tax proposal — and that makes all the difference. The beauty of true fee-and-dividend is that all of the proceeds go to reimbursing the people, so that it's not just another regressive tax: the proceeds are collected according to consumption, but distributed per-capita, so that those who consume a lot (frequent flyers, living in and heating giant houses, etc.) pay a lot, and people who consume little end up getting back more than they put in. This proposal, on the other hand, returns only 60% to the people; the other 40%  would be used for various purposes, including "energy efficiency" and (naturally) paying down the debt (!). This is, of course, only the starting place — this is the part that is ripe for loading up with lots of pork for lots of political contributors. And all for naught, as only a few senators will end up voting for even this. So far we have to go, to face reality...

China and India — and "common and differentiated responsibilities"

 I have so far received a few responses to my original email, and a few issues have come up… so that will be a good jumping-off point for me to further explore some of the issues I have been reading about…

One of the things I read a lot these day in the press, or in comments in online forums, or wherever, is that even if the US gets its emissions under control (a pretty unlikely scenario), we are at the mercy of developing nations like China and India. China, of course, famously passed the US in total emissions not long ago, and that seems to give many people an incentive to worry about developing nations rather than our own profligate consumption.

I am extremely wary of this urge to make China and India the bugaboos in this (led by our climate negotiators, who would like nothing better than a chance to deflect blame from ourselves). The principal of "common and differentiated responsibilities" in the Kyoto Protocol was devised for a reason -- if you think of the total amount of carbon we as a global species can release "safely" as our carbon budget, then we in the West, and especially we in the US, have already used far more than our share. So now we are trying to tell the rest of the world "we got ours, we got fat and comfortable off the stores of ancient sunlight, now it's time for ALL of us to cut back, too bad for you." I compare that to the "water rationing" our water company imposes in drought years, when all of us are required to cut back by 15% — whether we are only using what we need to survive, or are wasting water by watering huge lawns on sprawling estates every day… The latest figures show the US using 17.2 tons of CO2 per capita (slightly down from the 19 - 20 tons we used for the last few decades, but only because we are offshoring our emissions as companies move operations to low-wage countries). China is now up to 5.3 tons per capita, less than a third of our rate; and India's emissions are 1/12th of ours, at 1.4. So it's a little hard for us to point fingers across the globe… Yes, it is frightening to think of how emissions are growing in the East, but so much of that is driven by our own consumption — in a sane world, emissions would be counted at the consumption end, not the production end, and it would be entirely clear who is driving this destruction.

I'll end this one as well with a quote, this one from British climate scientist Kevin Anderson (quoted on Environmental Research), who figures that about 40-60% of the world's emissions come from 1-5% of the world's population, including "climate scientists, every journalist, pontificator and sceptic… [and] everyone who gets on a plane once a year… So we're the major emitters – we know who they are. Are we prepared to make changes to our lives now or have them forced upon us?"

my opening missive

Last week I sent a very long email to a few dozen of my friends, hoping to start some conversations and perhaps somehow make a difference. This is what I wrote:

Dear friends,

I would like to beg your indulgence as I begin the year with a long missive on a subject which has troubled my mind and occupied my thoughts for some time now. I have debated with myself over how to word this, and then whether to even send it out — knowing that this will pretty much brand me as a crazy obsessed environmentalist — but I so felt the need to do something that I have finally decided to send a cry from the heart and see what comes. I apologize for the length — it proved difficult to say what I feel without including the background information — my intention is not to pretend to know everything (I certainly don't), but to share some of what I've read about and perhaps to give some food for contemplation and start some conversations. So I would greatly appreciate your reading this, if you might have the time, and letting me know what you think about it...

I have read enough about global warming to understand the desperate situation we are in — the human-created calamity already set in motion, and the near-impossible measures needed, almost immediately, to avert an even worse crisis and somehow preserve a habitable planet. "Business as usual" puts the world on course for a rise of 6°C (11°F) this century. Researchers and activists have used 2°C (3.6°F) as the upper limit of minimal "safety" before positive feedbacks send warming spiraling completely out of control. Yet even now, at 0.8°C of warming, the Arctic sea ice is melting away alarmingly faster than anyone ever predicted; and the greenhouse gasses we have already emitted are enough to bring us to nearly 2°C of warming, even if we stopped using fossil fuels, cold turkey, tomorrow. We are well on the way toward a climate that is simply incompatible with life as we know it. Meanwhile, right now, the oceans are dying before our eyes (with dead zones expanding and 90% of large fish already gone), trees are dying across the planet, and species are being driven to extinction at the rate of one every seven minutes.

I also understand the extreme improbability of anything meaningful being done. Most solutions put forth in general discourse are on a scale so insignificant as to make almost no difference at all. There are solutions that could make a difference — emissions reductions of 10% a year, coupled with massive reforestation, would be a step; and a large carbon fee (with the dividends returned to the people, per capita) is one proposal for a way to get there. The problem is that we live on a finite planet, and reducing emissions enough to avert climate catastrophe is simply not compatible with endless growth — but endless growth is what all our economic and political systems depend on. So we talk about "sustainable growth" (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) and keep chasing the chimera of a technological fix that could allow us to grow indefinitely — a fix which is as mythical as a perpetual motion machine. Because of the rebound effect, producing more energy (of whatever kind, including "renewables") simply lowers cost and leads to more consumption — much in the same way that widening freeways simply encourages more driving and never actually solves the traffic problem. "Clean energy" really only helps keep us on the path of thinking we can keep using all the energy we need to fuel our unsustainable "lifestyles"… and allow us to put off facing the fact that what is needed is to simply STOP what we are doing, change the way we are living -- and radically, and now. In this situation, there truly is no free lunch.

The crisis we face goes so far beyond fluorescent lightbulbs, hybrid cars, and "green consumerism" (another oxymoron). Research has determined that we cannot pour more than about 500 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere and still have any hope of averting total disaster —and that 500 gigatons is about one-fifth of the carbon in proven fossil fuel reserves (forget about "peak oil" — our problem is that we still have way too much of the stuff). Only governments, working together, could possibly be powerful enough to keep all that carbon in the ground and rein in the fossil fuel companies that profit by using our atmosphere as a waste dump; only true systemic change will get us where we need to go — and systemic change, as Derrick Jensen warns, will not be brought about by personal choices. And I do know that my own attempts to live within a carbon budget, such as they are, really make no discernible difference (especially given that rebound effect, by which my conservation just makes consumption cheaper and easier for others…)

And yet, and yet... While it is absolutely true that global warming cannot be fought through consumer choices alone — we must battle the powerful economic interests who profit from our emissions and the government entities who serve them — it is equally true that we cannot hope to battle those interests while continuing to buy whatever they are selling. I do feel the need to make the best choices I can, to "walk my talk"… And, despairing of any hope for systems to change or for the powerful to do the right thing, I am beginning to agree with the sentiment expressed by a commenter on a UK Guardian thread, who said that "it is much harder to change the political system than to change your own behavior and the behavior of people you know," that the only way to make headway is to live as low-carbon as possible, and persuade others to do the same, one by one if need be. If enough of us do that, recursively multiplying our numbers, eventually the systems that support our unsustainable consumption may begin to crumble… (it's not much hope, but it's all I've got).

And here's the problem — I know very well that telling anyone that "this is what you should and shouldn't be doing" is a really quick and easy way to lose friends… So let me say right off that I certainly don't consider myself any kind of exemplar —I still drive a car to work every day (sigh… to two different schools, on opposite ends of town), I generally use far too much carbon just living in our rich industrialized culture (the best estimates of allowable limits for the kind of reductions we need are anywhere from ½ ton to 2 tons of carbon per person, per year — the average American uses twenty). But there are a few things I've looked into and found out a little about — so if you'll indulge me (if you're still reading, this far), I'll share a little, and you can take it as you may — and if enough folks start the conversation, maybe our governments might get around to doing what's necessary to allow us to live sustainably… My big three precepts for myself, as the three biggest things an individual can do, are: 1. Don't eat meat; 2. Don't fly on airplanes; and 3. Don't buy any new stuff you don't absolutely need.

Eating meat — When I stopped eating meat long ago it was for completely different reasons; but as it happens, meat production is incredibly carbon-intensive. The way it is produced these days, meat is simply grain, concentrated: each pound of meat contains many times that amount of grain (the vast majority of grain we grow goes to feed livestock) — along with all of the petroleum fertilizers, the rainforests cut down to run cattle, etc. etc… The UN FAO estimated that meat is responsible for 17% of all carbon emissions worldwide; Worldwatch added up the things the FAO left out and came up with the incredible figure of 51%. Either way, it's huge.

Flying — Air travel is also incredibly, if not unconscionably, carbon-intensive. One roundtrip LA-to-NY flight uses the equivalent of about 2 tons of CO2 emissions per (economy class) passenger — about the same amount the average resident of Brazil uses in a year, and either equivalent to or many times more than the per-person allowable annual limit for the necessary reductions… When my parents were young, flying was a huge big deal, but now it has become so commonplace that we think nothing of jetting across the country or the world for work or vacation. If carbon were priced at anything like a rate commensurate with its damage, none of us (at least in my circles) could afford to fly — it would again be a rare luxury rather than something we regularly use for transportation.

Buying stuff — This is sort of a no-brainer. A huge part of our emissions comes from manufacturing, buying, using, and then throwing away our stuff — It is a measure of the sickness of our society that we are defined as consumers instead of as citizens. China recently (and famously) passed up the US in total GHG emissions — but what's not usually mentioned is the reason for that is all of the stuff we buy from them! A Chronicle story before the holidays said that 75% of all new toys in the US are manufactured offshore (and the majority of those in China). So if you hear that US emissions have dropped slightly, that is why — we are simply offshoring our carbon emissions along with our jobs.

Of course, I know that common wisdom will say that if we all did this, our economy would take the proverbial nosedive. There's the rub: our economy, dependent on endless growth, just cannot be sustained over the long run — and the long run is getting very short these days. I know there are models of steady-state economies out there, which I have yet to investigate fully… but the important thing is that the collapse of a habitable planet, and the chaos that goes with it, will be orders of magnitude worse than the collapse of an economy. David Roberts, in "The Brutal Logic of Climate Change," talks about planned austerity, shared sacrifice… an "all-hands-on-deck mobilization" that is the moral equivalent of war. Life as we know it will have to change, for life as we know it not to be lost entirely.

It is already too late to avert disastrous effects — right now the Arctic icecap is melting away, with all of the feedbacks that entails — and it is easy to lose hope completely, to say there's no use trying, we can't prevent catastrophe whatever we do… But what we can do is to prevent catastrophe from being even worse, and in so doing we can make a difference.

The story I keep telling myself is the one about a father and child walking on a beach covered as far as the eye can see with starfish washed ashore, dead and dying. When the child picks up a starfish to toss it back in the ocean, the father asks "Why? What difference can you possibly make, just you, with all these thousands and thousands of starfish dying?" And the child picks up another one, tosses it in the ocean, and says "It makes a difference to that one."

Dear friends, if you are still reading, I truly appreciate the time you have taken with this… I have been sick at heart, knowing what we are doing to the world and the innocent life around us, watching as we hurtle toward a mass extinction, not knowing what to do that might be of any use. David Roberts said that "building a core cadre of intense, motivated citizens who feel the climate threat in their bones is an indispensable part of the puzzle" — maybe that's part of the reason I wrote this. Getting the conversation going is perhaps a start, and I would love to hear your thoughts… Thank you for listening.

peace and good wishes,
Avilee


(and just a few of my favorite, pertinent, quotes)…

"Do we want a living real world, or do we want a social structure that is killing the real world? Do we want a living real world, or do we want a dead real world, with a former social structure forgotten by everyone because there is no one left alive to remember? You choose." - Derrick Jensen

"I believe we are musicians in a human orchestra. It is time now to play the Save the World Symphony. It is a vast orchestral piece, and you are but one musician. You are not required to play a solo. But you are required to figure out what instrument you hold and play it as well as you can."   - Sandra Steingraber

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time… Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late."
    - Martin Luther King Jr. — "Beyond Vietnam" speech, April 4, 1967

"If we appear to seek the unattainable, it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable."
    - Port Huron Statement of the SDS

 “It makes a crucial difference whether humankind thinks of the natural world as consisting of resources or relatives.” - Oren Lyons, quoted by Daniel Wildcat in Red Alert