Chapter II (Condensed w/o Notes)

“Reducing the Increases” in the Atmospheric GHG Concentration

Page One

            In January 2011, NASA and NOAA announced that the latest temperature readings show 2010 was tied with 2005 for the hottest year in recorded human history.  The other hottest recorded years have all occurred since 1998. Annual and regional variations in surface temperatures are inevitable, but the trend toward greater global warming and climate change is unarguable from a scientific perspective.

            Many publications have described the human hardships and ecological degradation expected from climate change.  The central purpose of this book, in contrast, is to challenge climate-policy mistakes that are leading to the adoption of misguided mitigation programs with no chance of achieving genuine climate change progress. Whether as a result of ignorance, wishful thinking, self-serving rationalizations, or bad advice, most of the world’s policymakers do not understand how to respond to increasing climate change perils; and most expert climate advisors have been telling political leaders to choose feeble greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions-reduction programs that cannot yield significant climate benefits. Sincere concern without sufficient understanding is leading to the acceptance of self-defeating mitigation programs that will allow climate change risks to become steadily worse over time, despite the well-intentioned but fruitless expenditure of many billions of dollars on preventive efforts that cannot succeed.

            The consensus graduated emissions-reduction approach will prove “too little, too late” by deferring crucial GHG cutbacks too far into the future. These programs would consistently be back-loaded, in the sense that the major GHG pollution decreases will not be imposed until the last decades of the target schedule or later.  None of the consensus programs or proposals would require annual GHG emissions reductions of even 50% until 2050 and thereafter.  Before then, weak interim targets would allow huge amounts of residual GHG discharges — all authorized greenhouse gas discharges within the annual limits or caps — which are certain to compound the already-too-high atmospheric GHG concentration while allowing the atmospheric greenhouse effect, global warming, and climate change to become steadily more harmful and longer lasting.

            In basic terms, the greenhouse effect is caused by the retention of excess heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.  Increasing the amount of GHGs in the air will worsen the greenhouse effect by trapping more heat, which means that the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is the primary factor determining the extent of climate change risks.  Readers might suppose that fundamental climate policies would focus on stabilizing and then reducing the atmospheric GHG concentration that is causing the greenhouse effect. This is what a sensible climate policy could do and should do. Yet, nearly all climate change mitigation plans now focus instead on reducing annual GHG discharges by selected percentage rates applied over several decades. These conventional mitigation programs ignore the cumulative impacts of persistent residual discharges on the atmospheric GHG concentration, which is a crucial mistake.

            Under a GHG emissions-reduction approach, the “reductions” come from comparisons with the amount of pollution that would be discharged if no regulatory controls or caps were imposed, and not from comparisons with the amount of GHGs already in the air.  In the literature on climate change, this do-nothing or no-regulation condition is described as the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario. The consensus emissions-reduction programs are supposed to cut BAU discharges by a graduated percentage rate over a multi-decade period, while climate policymakers ordinarily do not even consider the effects of these emissions reductions on the cumulative atmospheric GHG concentration.

            A major cause of climate-policy confusion is the presence of two different background levels or baselines against which changes in climate conditions can be measured.  The BAU baseline compares the amount of GHG discharges cut by an emissions-reduction program against the unregulated pollution volume for that year. This comparison addresses how much GHG pollution will be eliminated by a mitigation program in comparison to BAU discharges with no cutbacks whatever. In contrast, the atmospheric GHG concentration baseline addresses the mitigation program’s impact on the cumulative GHG level in the air that causes climate change risks in comparison to rising, declining, or stable atmospheric concentrations in other years.

           Consider the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which has a target of cutting 10% of GHG emissions from power plants in the eastern US by 2018.  If this program is viewed from the BAU discharges baseline, it appears to accomplish some positive results by reducing eastern power plant GHG discharges 10% over the course of a decade.  Using a BAU baseline, an emissions-reduction program that cuts any amount of GHG pollution over any duration will be viewed as a worthwhile achievement when compared against BAU discharges with no restrictions at all placed on them.

            If the atmospheric GHG concentration baseline is adopted instead, as it should be, the RGGI program would be characterized as cutting 10% of BAU discharges from regulated power plants while allowing the remaining residual 90% of GHGs to be released into the air each year. Under the RGGI program, the power plants would continue discharging 90% of the GHG emissions they would have discharged absent any regulation. Praise does not seem warranted for a GHG emissions-reduction program that authorizes the continuation of 90% of annual BAU discharges and consequently will allow millions of tons of residual GHG emissions from power plants to increase the cumulative atmospheric GHG concentration in the next decade, which will cause climate conditions to become steadily more hazardous rather than safer.

            The residual GHG discharges — the volume of greenhouse gas pollution that the RGGI power plants will be allowed to put out above the 10% emissions-reduction target — would increase the atmospheric GHG concentration, creating greater climate change harms. Applying the BAU baseline to the RGGI program makes it appear to be a minor mitigation achievement cutting power plant emissions by 10% annually. On the other hand, applying the atmospheric concentration baseline shows that the RGGI program would be a major contributor to climate degradation because it will allow 90% of harmful BAU discharges from eastern power plants to contaminate the atmosphere every year. As long as the RGGI program authorizes large residual GHG discharges that increase the atmospheric GHG concentration, this mitigation effort cannot produce tangible climate change benefits despite its benign intentions and supposedly “efficient” cap-and-trade mechanism.