By Steven F. Hayward, Wall Street Journal
The usual chorus of environmentalists and editorial writers has chimed in to attack President Bush’s recent speech on climate change. In his address of April 23, he put forth a goal of stopping the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2025. “Way too little and way too late,” runs the refrain, followed by the claim that nothing less than an 80% reduction in emissions by the year 2050 will suffice - what I call the “80 by 50” target. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have endorsed it. John McCain is not far behind, calling for a 65% reduction. We all ought to reflect on what an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050 really means. When we do, it becomes clear that the president’s target has one overwhelming virtue: Assuming emissions curbs are even necessary, his goal is at least realistic.
The same cannot be said for the carbon emissions targets espoused by the three presidential candidates and environmentalists. Indeed, these targets would send us back to emissions levels last witnessed when the cotton gin was in daily use. By the year 2050, the Census Bureau projects that our population will be around 420 million. This means per capita emissions will have to fall to about 2.5 tons in order to meet the goal of 80% reduction.
It is likely that U.S. per capita emissions were never that low - even back in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood. The only nations in the world today that emit at this low level are all poor developing nations, such as Belize, Mauritius, Jordan, Haiti and Somalia. The enthusiasm for an 80% reduction target is often justified on grounds that national policy should set an ambitious goal. However, claims on behalf of alternative energy sources - biofuels, hydrogen, windpower and so forth - either do not match up to the scale of the energy required, or are not cost-competitive in current form. How on God’s green earth will we make up the difference? Someone should put this question to the candidates. And not let them slide past it with glittering generalities. Read more here.
By Jeff Poor, Business and Media Institute
It was a night filled with anti-corporate protests, anti-Bush comments, folk songs and the president of the Hip-Hop Caucus bellowing about America’s “illegal war” in Iraq. Welcome to the 2nd Annual “Climate Super Rally” featuring NASA’s Dr. James E. Hansen.
“Our addiction to oil has caused millions to be displaced,” liberal activist Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr. said, one of the event’s speakers. “And thousands - close to millions to lose their lives in this illegal war.” Not exactly typical climate change rhetoric. But Hansen was one of three headliners and his message was designed for the “super rally.” He played to crowd and said the battle was the fossil-fuel industry against “young people and nature.”
Hansen is one of the most-often cited scientists warning about the alleged dangers of climate change. Although he has claimed he was “censored” by NASA, he has been featured repeatedly on network news shows and in The New York Times. Former Vice President Al Gore has referenced Hansen on several occasions, but Gore has also called for a more cooperative approach to the environment - a stance which conflicts with the “super rally.”
The “rally” was held on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. on April 22 and hosted by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. Among the other featured voices were Rev. Jim Wallis, president of the liberal Sojourners magazine and controversial left-wing host and executive producer of “Democracy Now,” Amy Goodman.
Hansen used the event to attack the use of fossil fuels, specifically the coal industry, advocating government action to force the complete phase out of coal CO2 emission by 2030. “If we had a moratorium on coal-fired power plants within the next couple of years and then phased out the existing plants between now and 2030, then CO2 would peak at 425 ppm if we take the generous estimates for size of fossil fuel reservoirs,” Hansen said. Stepping outside of his role of a climatologist, Hansen included a call-to-action plan for the audience.
One critic of Hansen’s global warming theory is famed hurricane forecaster Dr. William Gray. Gray, a professor at Colorado State University, told the audience at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 4 in New York said Hansen was “the most egregious abuser” of data. According to Gray, Hansen’s alarmism is exaggerated because the models he uses to predict the increase in global warming count on too much water vapor in the atmosphere. Read more here.
By Josh Gerstein, New York Sun
The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels. With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down.
One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food. “I don’t think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial,” a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said. A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels.
Last year, Mr. Runge and a colleague, Benjamin Senauer, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs, “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor.” “We were criticized for being alarmist at the time,” Mr. Runge said. “I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative.” Mr. Senauer said climate change advocates, such as Vice President Gore, need to distance themselves from ethanol to avoid tarnishing the effort against global warming. “Crop-based biofuels are not part of the solution. They, in fact, add to the problem.”
Mr. Gore was not available for an interview yesterday on the food crisis, according to his spokeswoman. A spokesman for Mr. Gore’s public campaign to address climate change, the Alliance for Climate Protection, declined to comment for this article. However, the scientist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore, Rajendra Pachauri of the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, has warned that climate campaigners are unwise to promote biofuels in a way that risks food supplies. “We should be very, very careful about coming up with biofuel solutions that have major impact on production of food grains and may have an implication for overall food security,” Mr. Pachauri told reporters last month, according to Reuters. “Questions do arise about what is being done in North America, for instance, to convert corn into sugar then into biofuels, into ethanol.” Read more here.