HARD CHOICES AND NEW ENERGY

The first hard choice is between a carbon tax, a carbon cap-and-trade system or a combination of the two. After that, the choices get easier: Choose all forms of New Energy.

Hard choices, sacrifices ahead on global warming – including higher costs
Frank Davies, April 22, 2007 (San Jose Mercury-News)

WHO
This “thinkpiece” discusses actions and hard choices necessary by leaders and citizens, none of whom can look away from the climate change issue anymore, all of whom must confront costs involved in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
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WHAT
Low Hanging Fruit:
make federal buildings more energy efficient, promote compact fluorescent light bulbs, approve modest increases in spending to develop clean technologies.
Harder: Legislation raising Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFÉ) standard.
Hardest: Confronting what Stanford University ecologist Chris Field called the four interlocking parts, new technologies, conservation, efficiency; and capture/sequestration from coal-fired power plants.

WHEN
When global warming is seriously confronted.

WHERE
Leadership acting out of Washington, D.C., is required to do the hard things. Citizens everywhere have to be willing to do what they can: “The current challenge has multiple fronts, some extremely complex, and require global cooperation on a scale we have never seen.”

WHY
Hardest of all: These things mean higher costs for all energy consumers. 70% of U.S. carbon emissions come from power plants and motor vehicles. While coal and oil remain cheaper than alternative fuels and energies, there will be little momentum for change. A carbon tax or a gas tax or any measure establishing the cost for fossil fuels which includes externalities, is considered is political suicide. Instead, candidates for leadership put forward vague cap-and-trade plans, despite the fact that recent polls show people want more electricity from alternatives even if rates go up. Alternative fuel breakthroughs may help but higher costs almost always lead to conservation.
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QUOTES
- William Pizer (w/ centrist think tank Resources for the Future): "You're going to pay one way or another, whether it's a tax or a permit program…"
-Hillary Clinton: "…two words - innovation and efficiency."
- Carnegie fellow David Rothkopf: "You won't hear a lot about taxes or meaty solutions prior to the 2008 election, although the next administration will have to deal with that…California has been the test tube, and that's the way the nation is heading…We're entering an age of limitations, where you can't have everything you want, and people are ready to change in some serious ways."
- President John F. Kennedy, 1961, announcing the Apollo program: "No single space project will be more impressive to mankind - and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish…We should go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard."