Cutting carbon and still wrecking the planet.

• Author: Cox, Stan
• Position: Getting Serious About Climate Change - Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy by Arjun Makhijani - Report

From the day the prospect of rapid climate change became an officially recognized crisis, it has attracted multitudes of proposed "solutions" that mostly substitute snake oil for crude oil. Now comes a new, better-than-average proposal, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy by Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER).

The book-length report will doubtless draw praise in environmental circles. But unfortunately, judging from the 23-page executive summary now available on the Internet (1), the plan is doomed from the start by its reliance on big business to lead us into the new, green era it portrays.

What IEER proposes and what it doesn't

IEER deserves enormous credit for setting a very ambitious zero-[CO.sub.2] goal, calling for a "hard cap" on carbon emissions, ruling out the dangerously seductive fix of nuclear power, rejecting phony carbon "credits" bought in poor nations, and seeking to eliminate subsidies for biofuels made from food crops. Those features of the report put it head and shoulders above proposals that do rely on such self-defeating strategies.

However, IEER's recommendations do not go far enough. They allow for sale of emissions allowances--i.e., licenses to pollute--by the US government. And the hard carbon cap would apply only to "large users," meaning companies that consume 100 billion Btu or more per year.

According to the executive summary: "Private vehicles, residential and small commercial use of natural gas and oil for heating, and other similar small-scale uses would not be covered by the cap." Therefore, we consumers would be free to continue doing our job in this economy: to consume as much as we can.

IEER's recommendations would impose no green taxes on anything, would permit construction of new coal-fired plants that propose to capture their carbon, would not encourage lower birth rates, and would focus only on improvement of private cars and trucks; there is no mention of public transportation in the executive summary. Indeed, the summary's market-friendly, growth-friendly approach should hold strong appeal for executives.

A graph shows total "delivered energy" rising by about 67% by 2050. The bulk of that increase will be achieved through biofuels and "efficiency." Another graph shows the electricity supply remaining more or less constant, implying that the big increases in energy demand will come in transportation.

The vision being advanced by IEER is captured by the first illustration that appears in the summary: a photo of a US Navy parking lot in San Diego in which vast photovoltaic arrays provide shade for the rows of cars.

Market-friendly, growth-friendly

IEER envisions economic growth of 3% per year throughout the next half-century and, presumably, beyond. That's to be achieved entirely through a 2% per year increase in "efficiency per unit of GDP," which would reduce energy use by 1% annually. This is seen as extension of an encouraging trend: "Since the mid-1990s, the rate of energy growth has been about 2% less than the rate of GDP growth ..."

But note that the "efficiency" of the past decade has not actually managed to reduce energy consumption. Energy use and carbon emissions per person in the US were virtually the same in 2005 as in 1995. National consumption and emissions rose in step with population, growing by 13% over that time. (2)

Weighing our energy use in GDP units is mere sleight-of-hand. Why are we now getting more economic growth out of each billion Btus? Here are the percentages of GDP accounted for by some energy-intensive versus less intensive sectors of the economy in 1977 and 2005 (3):

1977 2005 Agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation 33% 16% Finance, professional and business services, health care, 28% 43% and entertainment As we have allowed low-wage nations to do most our manufacturing and much of our food-raising for us, GDP has been boosted instead by more rapid circulation of money for services, without any assurance that those services are fully providing people the necessities of life or making anyone happier. Indeed, polls show the opposite. And as the US GDP has climbed steadily, the "Genuine Progress Indicator," an alternative to GDP that's designed to measure changes in...