U.S. climate blame game: My two cents

Since the election (and even before), pundits have been lining up (here, here, and here) trying to figure out why the heck the U.S. Congress couldn't pass a climate bill this year. Potential culprits include the Republicans, the Tea Party, Rahm Emanuel, the media, environmental groups, the public, the fossil fuel industry, Harry Reid, Senate Democrats, the filibuster, the Senate itself, Barack Obama, etc., etc., etc.

I think it's easy and stupid to blame the Republicans. Yes, the party has become deranged since the 2008 election, and the fact that denial of climate change has become party dogma even for those who know better is very disturbing. But if a child misbehaves, do you blame the child or the adults who should know better? If you lose a football game, do you blame the other team or you own bad playing?

Democrats in the Senate didn't even bring the climate bill passed in the House to a vote. That's their fault. If they had put up a fight and lost, that would be one thing. Not even showing up is another. Now, Obama never convinced me of his golden touch, but his popularity in 2008 was due to people's belief that he had a strong vision for the country and was passionate enough to take us there. Where is his vision on climate change?? His administration is directly culpable: it sabotaged Senate efforts at several turns. But the president has been eerily silent on climate and his messaging is pathetic:

And I think one of the things that's very important for me is not to have us ignore the science, but rather to find ways that we can solve these problems that don't hurt the economy, that encourage the development of clean energy in this country, that, in fact, may give us opportunities to create entire new industries and create jobs that - and that put us in a competitive posture around the world.

Setting up climate action as "not bad for the economy" is counterproductive. It retains "economic growth" as the most important value for Americans and sets up a requirement that mitigation measures not touch that growth. It's also easy to show that any policy that could mitigate emissions might slow economic growth, setting it up for failure.

So, to recap: Democrats, own up to your share of the blame, especially you, Obama. You're supposed to be a leader. While you're at it, start selling climate policy on its own merits rather than qualifying it and dooming it to unattainable standards.

Climate Lecture 2010: Elinor Ostrom at TU

Today Elinor Ostrom spoke at the Technical University's Climate Lecture. Her talk was lively and full of food for thought, based around the question "Who Affects Climate Change." Some highlights:

• She took issue with the premise of collective action theory that action must be taken at the global level. She hoped that international agreement can be reached at some point, but stressed that action needs to be taken now at all levels, and that even a global agreement would have to be implemented at lower scales.
• She drew on her vast knowledge of empirical research in collective resource problems to discuss the most important features of successful solutions: monitoring, trust, and use of local expertise.
• She advocated for a "polycentric" approach that takes into account the nested externalities of emissions decisions (for example, a family that drives to work rather than biking may face more health problems and will have to pay more for gas and car maintenance, in addition to emitting more greenhouse gases) and considers all levels of governance.

Ostrom peppered her talk with lively examples and anecdotes (in explaining one study of local policework that she'd done, she said "I'm sure I've spent more time in the back of a police car than anyone else here!"), and was an engaging and inspiring speaker.

In an interesting contrast with climate politics in the United States, German protesters loudly disrupted one of the speakers: Tuomo Hatakka, CEO of Vattenfall Europe, a major electric utility. After he took the stage to give some brief remarks, several students in the auditorium threw up huge banners protesting Vattenfall's use of coal and nuclear energy, to loud cheers and applause. The president of the university had to take the microphone and ask the students to channel their dissent into productive questions after the speech. And indeed, Hatakka came out looking like the grown-up: once the crowd calmed down, he said that Vattenfall is "part of the problem. But we want to be part of the solution." He added that the company is trying to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, and become climate neutral by 2050.

It's clear that the vocal political fringe in Germany is of a distinctly green bent. Although I consider myself more of a pragmatist (and was embarrassed by the outburst), I think it is ultimately good for German politics that the debate is between the crazy greens and the pragmatic greens about the best climate policies, rather than between climate change deniers and believers over whether there's a problem at all.

Depressing

So what's happened to Lindsey Graham recently? The erstwhile Senate cap-and-trade co-author has turned climate skeptic! Ezra Klein explains:

Back when I interviewed Graham, he was trying out some of the same rhetoric, and I walked away pretty depressed. It seemed to me that Lindsey Graham 1) believed in climate change and believed that it was a problem, as that was the only explanation for the time he'd sunk into the issue, and 2) believed that the Republican base's antipathy towards Al Gore and environmentalists had become so overwhelming that the only way to convince them to cap carbon emissions would be to persuade them that doing so had nothing to do with atmospheric temperatures. And I really have no reason to think that Graham is wrong on that, or that I know grass-roots Republicans better than he does.

Ugh. More evidence that the Republican party has officially gone insane and that the U.S. political system needs a major overhaul. The "debate" about climate change has been over in most of the rest of the world for at least a decade. Can the U.S. just get with the program?