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Feeling the Heat
Special report
FEELING THE HEAT
NASA/SEAN SMITH
Action on climate change is on both presidential candidates’ campaign agendas – but the real test will come when firm decisions have to be made
FRED PEARCE, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
IF YOU want to see where the US is headed on climate change take a look at California. Under Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger – whose proactive stance on air pollution is said to have been triggered partly by his son’s asthma – the golden state is blazing a trail on greenhouse gas emissions for the next president to follow. “We are doing what we want the federal government to do,” says Eileen Todd, deputy secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency. “Both presidential candidates now say they want to fill the vacuum in 12 | NewScientist | 11 October 2008
Washington. We want them to have a working model in front of them when they arrive at the White House.” As a major election issue, climate change has come into its own since the last presidential race, and the Bush administration’s perceived inaction on global warming now appears at odds with the prevailing mood (see “How to sell the plan to the nation”). Republican nominee John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have both denounced Bush’s record on climate, and McCain has gone so far as to call it “disgraceful”. The question is whether either candidate will follow California’s lead in reining in carbon emissions.
Will American voters accept the sacrifices needed to curb the nation’s carbon emissions?
Schwarzenegger’s plan aims to cut California’s carbon dioxide emissions by 15 per cent by 2020 – a return to 1990 levels. To reach this ambitious target, state legislators have endorsed a cap-and-trade system aimed at power generators and heavy industry, to begin in 2012. Further measures include regulations on automobile emissions, new fuel standards, and a plan to attack the state’s car culture by forcing local planning authorities to cut out urban sprawl and site new housing close to rail lines. The state government will use its buying power too. From 2012, it promises to use renewables to power the huge pumps delivering www.newscientist.com
irrigation water to Central valley farms. This aggressive strategy has not been popular with the White House: in particular, the Bush administration has moved to block a 30 per cent cut that the state wants to impose on vehicle emissions by 2016. This resistance should end, as McCain and Obama both say they would allow the vehicle emissions law to stand. To make a real dent in America’s carbon footprint, however, the next president will need to do more than remove roadblocks; he will need to be in the driver’s seat. To this end each candidate has adopted, as a key element of climate policy, a system of cap-and-trade, under which industry will be offered a limited supply of tradeable permits to emit CO2. McCain will initially hand out the permits for free, as Europe has done, but Obama says he will auction them – and use the cash to fund a programme of federal investment aimed at transforming the energy sector. Both rely on the well-researched idea that putting a price on carbon emissions through cap-and-trade will unlock private-sector innovation and investment in low-carbon technologies. With carbon emissions predicted to trade at around $30 per tonne, large solar power plants would be cheaper than coal, and wind cheaper still. McCain and his economics guru Douglas Holtz-Eakin say the carbon market can cut CO2 emissions largely unaided. Holtz-Eakin recently declared California-style standards for lowcarbon fuel “redundant” if cap-andtrade is introduced. But Obama, whose policy most closely resembles that being developed by Schwarzenegger’s administration, reckons that regulation will be a crucial part of the mix. Most climate policy analysts agree. Jim Sweeney, director of Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency, says: “Putting a price on carbon is absolutely vital and important to push the system. Once you have a price, people stop arguing and start doing. But price won’t change everything. Some things respond to regulation rather than pricing – like car emissions standards and planning policy.” Where will the cap on US carbon emissions be set? Both candidates are cagey about their short-term plans, but both propose cutting US emissions www.newscientist.com
“Both McCain and Obama appear to expect the world will accept their plans as a fait accompli”
back to 1990 levels by 2020. This is in line with California’s plans but is still far short of the target of a 7 per cent cut by 2010, agreed by President Clinton under the Kyoto protocol. In the longer term, McCain sees a 60 per cent cut by 2050 and Obama suggests 80 per cent, though neither will be in office when the deepest cuts will need to be made. Both also say they will rejoin the world’s negotiations on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, which are due to culminate in a deal in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the end of next year, and both say they want to integrate US carbon trading markets with international ones. Yet neither concedes, publicly at least, that their targets ought to be subject to international negotiation: they appear to expect the world will accept their plans as a fait accompli. At the same time they have ultimatums for others. In particular, McCain said in an interview with the Grist environmental news website that he will not sign up to an international agreement on climate in Copenhagen unless China and India accept limits too. He has not said what limits he has in mind. This is a potential deal-breaker, given that the per-capita emissions of these two countries are respectively a quarter and a tenth those of the US. Unlike, McCain, Obama tacitly acknowledges this. “We cannot expect China and India to take the lead on this. We must take the first step.” But he adds:
SOUNDBITES ‹ We need to deal with central facts of rising temperatures… and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring.› John McCain, Portland, Oregon, 12 May 2008
‹ We are not acting as good stewards of God’s Earth when our bottom line puts our profits before the future of our planet.› Barack Obama, Des Moines, Iowa, 14 October 2007 “Our second and third steps must be participation by all countries.” His climate adviser, Jason Grumet, says that if China and India don’t join the party, an Obama White House would eventually require importers of energyintensive products like aluminium to buy emissions permits for “the carbon embedded in those products”. As this could be a violation of World Trade Organization rules, it raises the alarming prospect of a clash between the global regimes on climate change and trade. With such battles lurking in the wings, anybody who thinks that strong US action on climate change is a done deal after the election could be in for a surprise. ●
HOW TO SELL THE PLAN TO THE NATION As the presidential election approaches, concern about climate change among US voters seems to have ebbed from a peak last year. In April 2007, one-third of Americans queried by researchers at Stanford University in California named global warming as the world’s biggest environmental problem – double the proportion from the year before. But when the Stanford team asked the same question for ABC News in July this year the figure had fallen back to 25 per cent. Pinning down the precise reasons for the decline is hard, says Jon Krosnick, who heads the Stanford survey team. Rising gasoline prices
have given voters an unpleasant taste of how action to reduce greenhouse emissions could hit them in their wallets, while wider concern about the US economy may have drawn attention away from the environment. Against this background, how can voters be sold on the cap-and-trade climate policies favoured by both candidates? Last year, a poll conducted by Krosnick’s team for New Scientist revealed widespread public distrust towards this approach. Instead, voters preferred the idea of mandatory cuts, with no emissions trading. Economic studies and practical experience with other forms of
pollution suggest that cap-and-trade schemes can cut emissions at a lower cost. So in subsequent polling, conducted for Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment, Krosnick has investigated how to get this message across. One explanation had the largest effect: “That was telling them that it had worked under the Clean Air Act to reduce acid rain,” he says. This information about cap-andtrade’s prior success increased support by 13 percentage points – around three times the swing produced by an explanation of the policy’s efficiency or of the government’s ability to track the emissions of individual power companies. Peter Aldhous, San Francisco
11 October 2008 | NewScientist | 13
FEELING THE HEAT
NASA/SEAN SMITH
Action on climate change is on both presidential candidates’ campaign agendas – but the real test will come when firm decisions have to be made
FRED PEARCE, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
IF YOU want to see where the US is headed on climate change take a look at California. Under Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger – whose proactive stance on air pollution is said to have been triggered partly by his son’s asthma – the golden state is blazing a trail on greenhouse gas emissions for the next president to follow. “We are doing what we want the federal government to do,” says Eileen Todd, deputy secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency. “Both presidential candidates now say they want to fill the vacuum in 12 | NewScientist | 11 October 2008
Washington. We want them to have a working model in front of them when they arrive at the White House.” As a major election issue, climate change has come into its own since the last presidential race, and the Bush administration’s perceived inaction on global warming now appears at odds with the prevailing mood (see “How to sell the plan to the nation”). Republican nominee John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have both denounced Bush’s record on climate, and McCain has gone so far as to call it “disgraceful”. The question is whether either candidate will follow California’s lead in reining in carbon emissions.
Will American voters accept the sacrifices needed to curb the nation’s carbon emissions?
Schwarzenegger’s plan aims to cut California’s carbon dioxide emissions by 15 per cent by 2020 – a return to 1990 levels. To reach this ambitious target, state legislators have endorsed a cap-and-trade system aimed at power generators and heavy industry, to begin in 2012. Further measures include regulations on automobile emissions, new fuel standards, and a plan to attack the state’s car culture by forcing local planning authorities to cut out urban sprawl and site new housing close to rail lines. The state government will use its buying power too. From 2012, it promises to use renewables to power the huge pumps delivering www.newscientist.com
irrigation water to Central valley farms. This aggressive strategy has not been popular with the White House: in particular, the Bush administration has moved to block a 30 per cent cut that the state wants to impose on vehicle emissions by 2016. This resistance should end, as McCain and Obama both say they would allow the vehicle emissions law to stand. To make a real dent in America’s carbon footprint, however, the next president will need to do more than remove roadblocks; he will need to be in the driver’s seat. To this end each candidate has adopted, as a key element of climate policy, a system of cap-and-trade, under which industry will be offered a limited supply of tradeable permits to emit CO2. McCain will initially hand out the permits for free, as Europe has done, but Obama says he will auction them – and use the cash to fund a programme of federal investment aimed at transforming the energy sector. Both rely on the well-researched idea that putting a price on carbon emissions through cap-and-trade will unlock private-sector innovation and investment in low-carbon technologies. With carbon emissions predicted to trade at around $30 per tonne, large solar power plants would be cheaper than coal, and wind cheaper still. McCain and his economics guru Douglas Holtz-Eakin say the carbon market can cut CO2 emissions largely unaided. Holtz-Eakin recently declared California-style standards for lowcarbon fuel “redundant” if cap-andtrade is introduced. But Obama, whose policy most closely resembles that being developed by Schwarzenegger’s administration, reckons that regulation will be a crucial part of the mix. Most climate policy analysts agree. Jim Sweeney, director of Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency, says: “Putting a price on carbon is absolutely vital and important to push the system. Once you have a price, people stop arguing and start doing. But price won’t change everything. Some things respond to regulation rather than pricing – like car emissions standards and planning policy.” Where will the cap on US carbon emissions be set? Both candidates are cagey about their short-term plans, but both propose cutting US emissions www.newscientist.com
“Both McCain and Obama appear to expect the world will accept their plans as a fait accompli”
back to 1990 levels by 2020. This is in line with California’s plans but is still far short of the target of a 7 per cent cut by 2010, agreed by President Clinton under the Kyoto protocol. In the longer term, McCain sees a 60 per cent cut by 2050 and Obama suggests 80 per cent, though neither will be in office when the deepest cuts will need to be made. Both also say they will rejoin the world’s negotiations on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, which are due to culminate in a deal in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the end of next year, and both say they want to integrate US carbon trading markets with international ones. Yet neither concedes, publicly at least, that their targets ought to be subject to international negotiation: they appear to expect the world will accept their plans as a fait accompli. At the same time they have ultimatums for others. In particular, McCain said in an interview with the Grist environmental news website that he will not sign up to an international agreement on climate in Copenhagen unless China and India accept limits too. He has not said what limits he has in mind. This is a potential deal-breaker, given that the per-capita emissions of these two countries are respectively a quarter and a tenth those of the US. Unlike, McCain, Obama tacitly acknowledges this. “We cannot expect China and India to take the lead on this. We must take the first step.” But he adds:
SOUNDBITES ‹ We need to deal with central facts of rising temperatures… and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring.› John McCain, Portland, Oregon, 12 May 2008
‹ We are not acting as good stewards of God’s Earth when our bottom line puts our profits before the future of our planet.› Barack Obama, Des Moines, Iowa, 14 October 2007 “Our second and third steps must be participation by all countries.” His climate adviser, Jason Grumet, says that if China and India don’t join the party, an Obama White House would eventually require importers of energyintensive products like aluminium to buy emissions permits for “the carbon embedded in those products”. As this could be a violation of World Trade Organization rules, it raises the alarming prospect of a clash between the global regimes on climate change and trade. With such battles lurking in the wings, anybody who thinks that strong US action on climate change is a done deal after the election could be in for a surprise. ●
HOW TO SELL THE PLAN TO THE NATION As the presidential election approaches, concern about climate change among US voters seems to have ebbed from a peak last year. In April 2007, one-third of Americans queried by researchers at Stanford University in California named global warming as the world’s biggest environmental problem – double the proportion from the year before. But when the Stanford team asked the same question for ABC News in July this year the figure had fallen back to 25 per cent. Pinning down the precise reasons for the decline is hard, says Jon Krosnick, who heads the Stanford survey team. Rising gasoline prices
have given voters an unpleasant taste of how action to reduce greenhouse emissions could hit them in their wallets, while wider concern about the US economy may have drawn attention away from the environment. Against this background, how can voters be sold on the cap-and-trade climate policies favoured by both candidates? Last year, a poll conducted by Krosnick’s team for New Scientist revealed widespread public distrust towards this approach. Instead, voters preferred the idea of mandatory cuts, with no emissions trading. Economic studies and practical experience with other forms of
pollution suggest that cap-and-trade schemes can cut emissions at a lower cost. So in subsequent polling, conducted for Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment, Krosnick has investigated how to get this message across. One explanation had the largest effect: “That was telling them that it had worked under the Clean Air Act to reduce acid rain,” he says. This information about cap-andtrade’s prior success increased support by 13 percentage points – around three times the swing produced by an explanation of the policy’s efficiency or of the government’s ability to track the emissions of individual power companies. Peter Aldhous, San Francisco
11 October 2008 | NewScientist | 13