US climate emissions heading down, down, down

Finally, US climate emissions are heading in the right direction, although not necessarily for all the right reasons, all of the time. But they are going down for some of the right reasons.

Praise be.

This according to a Grist article published in the Guardian.

The reasons given are of course, the recession (no surprise there) but also energy efficiency efforts, and renewable energy deployment, especially wind power.

While oil prices are heading up again, and are now widely touted to keep going up.

I'm on record here in this blog and elsewhere for having said that we don't necessarily need a climate bill to get emissions down.

We don't have one, and emissions are going down, so I must have been right, right?

High energy prices for fossil fuels, combined with incentives for efficiency and renewables, will do just as well and possibly better, at least to begin, than a climate bill. There are so many low hanging fruit to pick in our national energy and energy efficiency portfolios, lowering emissions is just a matter of applying rational thought to the use of energy, at least in the beginning.

In an energy efficiency orchard full of nice, fat, juicy, expensive low hanging fruit, a climate bill might even slow down the pickers, or distort their efforts so they pick the wrong ones first.

The lingering danger is, however, that without climate action, the same market incentives (high oil prices and incentives for efficiency and renewables) also create a playing field that tilts in the direction of cheap-and-nasty coal-fired power production.

So what we need there is some kind of one-way valve for coal in this particular dynamic system. No place to go but down. I'm with Jim Hansen (and I quote): "somebody needs to step forward and say there has to be a moratorium, draw a line in the sand and say no more coal-fired power stations."

No new coal-fired power plants, and aggressive retirement and replacement of old ones, is definitely the ticket. Cap and trade will do this, or a carbon tax, but so will EPA regulation of CO2 as a pollutant, which doesn't require an Act of Congress. Way back when Obama first came on board, the EPA began the regulation-writing process. It takes a while, and can be slowed or speeded at the will of the President, but because of court precedent it is inexorable. Eventually the EPA will issue CO2 regulations, whether Congress caps, trades, or dances the fandago.

So either way, as long as the Obama administration is serious, coal goes down.

So it seems to me that we may have a fail-safe system in place at least for the next three years. I'm starting to feel kind of optimistic for the future.

There will of course be a know-nothing backlash.

That much is traditional in America.

And the neo-Coughlinites of radio and cable TV will sing out to high heaven that coal belongs to Jesus and we should burn it to praise him.

Again, tradition dies hard.

But we should always remember that the real tradition in American society is that reactionary movements always lose in the end.

In this case, they are already losing, as long as emissions, and fossil energy consumption, are going down.

Emissions will continue to drop just naturally because of all the low hanging fruit now getting more and more aggressively picked. The accession of the first graduates from programs like ours, trained to pick 'em, will help.

That's right. We will very soon graduate our first Sustainability Design and Technology graduates, all of whom are very well trained in the finding and picking of low-hanging energy fruit. They are already saving money for the college and for their internship providers, while also reducing emissions. I'm very pleased with the smarts and the good sense of our soon-to-be-grads.

What will also help is the continued regime of aggressive incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency, and of course high oil prices. I have a lot of faith in the likes of Chu, Holdren, and Fetter, to keep up their end of the argument within the administration.

Optimism. It's a drug I don 't usually recommend. I'm with Barbara Ehrenreich:

"Positive thinking" is neither.

All this New-Agey positive thinking, if-you-can't-say-something-nice-don't-say-anything-at-all nonsense is for intellectual lightweights.

Real scientists and serious thinkers are not, and should never be, trained that way.

If you have something negative to say, based on fact, you should always say it.

But, if the facts appear positive, then that has to be said too.

And, for once, I think they are.