Energy and
Environmental
Policy
Common Sense
Climate Policy
Mark Spurr, IDEA Legislative Director
With continuing economic and political turmoil in developed countries and a lack of
international consensus on climate policy,
the United Nations Climate Change
Conference in Cancun in early December
is unlikely to change the world. In the
United States, an anemic economy and
electoral results that signal a significant
rightward shift in the next Congress mean
that climate legislation is a nonstarter. New
conservative governments in the United
Kingdom and elsewhere are grappling with
climate and energy policy within a general
political framework of economic austerity.
However, there is a basic insight that
is largely missing from the climate policy
debate that I believe can bridge some of
the gap between climate skeptics and
climate true believers, Republicans and
Democrats, Conservatives and Labor.
That insight starts with a forthright
recognition of what we all know in our
hearts: Human beings are terrible at
predicting the future. If you don’t know
what’s coming down the pike, common
sense tells you to stay on your toes – be
flexible to respond as the future unfolds.
The Wisdom of Mark Twain
The climate debate is rife with predictions about the climate science (How
quickly and in what ways will climate
impacts occur?) and in energy policy
(What technologies can be deployed and
at what cost in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or adapt to climate
change?). While I lack the space in this
column to wade into the many arguments
regarding such predictions, I will say this:
Only those with delusions of grandeur
believe that we human beings fully understand the incredibly complex interaction
between the earth and its climate and can
predict the results of climate change.
If you don’t know what’s coming
down the pike, common sense
tells you to stay on your toes
– be flexible to respond as the
future unfolds.
For example, climate scientists failed
to anticipate the accelerated melting
of major ice sheets during the last
decade. In its 2007 Fourth Assessment
Report, the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change used new satellite
data to conclude that shrinkage of ice
sheets may contribute more to sea level
rise than it had thought as recently
as 2001. The panel concluded that it
could not “provide a best estimate
or an upper bound for sea level rise”
over the next century due to its lack
of knowledge about Earth’s ice (IPCC
© 2011 International District Energy Association. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Fourth Assessment Report, Summary for
Policymakers, p. 7).
My point is that the only thing we
can say with certainty is that we don’t
know how climate change will play
out in its impacts on temperatures, sea
level, floods, droughts and hurricanes,
ecosystem changes, human disease and
social dislocation.
Similarly, the energy policy
debate often tends to be based on the
assumption that we are mighty smart –
that we can predict what technologies
can be deployed to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions, what these technologies
will cost, and what the supplies and costs
of fossil fuels will be. Climate and energy
policy analyses are largely mechanistic
exercises, determining which gizmos
should be used to meet this or that
energy requirement. I’ve been involved
in energy policy since the late 1970s, and
I’ve seen the conventional wisdom about
energy supplies, prices and technologies
vacillate wildly over the years. The only
common thread: The conventional wisdom
has always been wrong. I’ve had enough
experience in energy to state it plainly
this way: Anyone who is highly confident
in his or her predictions about climate
change and energy technologies and
prices is highly foolish. Among the many
pearls of wisdom from Mark Twain is
his remark: “The art of prophecy is very
difficult, especially about the future.”
Blind Faith
So … what to do?
I am not suggesting that we simply
throw our fate to the winds – far from
it. Will new technologies miraculously
appear to save the day? Miracles don’t
just happen; they require at the very
least a substantial investment in research,
development and demonstration (RD&D).
On this point I agree with Bjorn Lomborg,
a prominent ‘skeptic’ regarding climate
change. However, Lomborg has greater
faith than I that, in his words, “green
energy R&D would produce the kind of
game-changing breakthroughs needed
to fuel a carbon-free future.” In fact,
Lomborg and other skeptics seem to
have inexhaustible faith – that climate
change impacts won’t be so bad; that we
can always adapt (build seawalls around
District Energy / First Quarter 2011 79
