Climate Change: The State of the Question and the Search for the Answer

CLIMATE CHANGE: THE STATE OF THE QUESTION AND THE SEARCH FOR THE ANSWER

SPEECH BY EILEEN CLAUSSEN, PRESIDENT, PEW CENTER ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE

ST. JOHNS UNIVERSITY, October 5, 2006

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Thank you very much. It is an honor to be here at St. John’s and to be a participant in your religion and science project.

I thought I would open today with a passage from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring:

The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth’s vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.

That species, of course, is us. And alter it, we have. Which brings me to the somewhat cryptic title of my remarks, The State of the Question and the Search for the Answer.

You might well ask -- what is the State of the Question? It seemed fairly straightforward to me when I first sat down to prepare these remarks, but the more I thought about it – the more elusive the question became. After much pondering, I decided that perhaps this needed to be done somewhat in reverse – that in order to figure out the State of the Question, we actually needed to first ask and answer a series of preliminary questions that will lead us finally to the state of the question.

So let’s begin our search with questions about the science of climate change, the technologies that can be used to address the problem, and the policies that will help get those technologies into the marketplace. And let me provide some relatively easy answers. And then I can move on to what I view as the larger question and the search for that answer.

• First, do we know enough about the science of climate change to justify taking action now?
• Second, do we as a civilization possess the capacity, the tools and the technologies to address this issue in a meaningful way?
• And, third, are there are public policies that will help us reach our goals in ways that will not cause undue hardship?

Is the Science Certain?

Starting with the science, the question is: do we know enough to act? And the answer is unequivocally yes. Every year (and even every month, it seems), the science on climate change becomes more certain and more disturbing.

Consider September. NASA released a study showing higher temperatures and a pronounced retreat of winter sea ice in the Arctic over the past two winters. This study has raised the level of concern because although for years, scientists have reported declines in summer sea ice, this is the first time a similar pattern has been shown happening in the dark of the Arctic winter, a new step in the progression toward an ice-free Arctic. September also produced a report in the journal Nature putting to rest any suggestion that long-term changes in solar output, or luminosity, might be influencing global temperatures and climate. This claim has long been put forward as a reason for inaction – it’s not human interference that is causing the earth to warm, it’s a natural phenomenon. Not so according to solar astronomer Peter Foukal, who together with his colleagues has found that the theory of sunspot-driven climate change has no veracity. The impact of sunspots on the climate are simply too small and too constant to account for the changes in temperature that we are seeing.

So the drumbeat continues. And what the drumbeat tells us in no uncertain terms is that climate change is happening. Scientists are increasingly concerned too that the impacts we are seeing are happening much sooner than expected. Global temperatures have risen by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last century, with average warming of as much as 4 degrees in some regions.

And this warming trend has accelerated in recent years. The ten warmest years recorded have all occurred between 1995 and 2005. 2005 itself was the second hottest year on record, surpassed only by 1998, when El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean contributed to above-average temperatures worldwide. And the trend continues in 2006. For the United States at least, the first six months of this year were the warmest such period on record. No U.S. state was cooler than average for the six-month period; and five states experienced record warmth.

Scientists say these increases in global temperatures will continue and accelerate in the years ahead. The projection is that average global temperature will rise by two-and-a-half to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century, with the level of warming in the United States projected to be higherthan the global average.

We are often asked if the role of human interference in this warming is equally unequivocal, and the answer is also yes. The level of warming we have seen cannot be explained by natural causes. Scientists have established a clear connection between rising temperatures and rising concentrations of greenhouse gases, primarily from the burning of coal and oil. In fact, looking back 400,000 years, we can see that global temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels go up and down together as if in a dance; they are intimately connected.

In 2004, a researcher named Naomi Oreskes conducted a review of over 900 peer-reviewed journal articles to see if there was indeed a consensus among the scientific community on the role of human actions on the climate, and what she found was this: not one of the authors disagreed with the evidence showing a human impact on the climate over the last several decades. Not one. Her findings titled, Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, were published in the Journal Science.

Last year the United States National Academy of Sciences joined a group of 10 other science academies from throughout the world in a statement calling for “prompt action” on global warming by world leaders. The statement could not have been more explicit about the connection between human activity and climate change. It stated: “Action taken now to reduce significantly the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will lessen the magnitude and rate of climate change.”

Of course, it is not just rising temperatures that concern scientists but rather what those temperatures will mean to life on earth. We are confident that we will see an increase in weather extremes – more droughts, more storms, and more floods; the melting of glaciers and global sea-ice and the inevitable rise in sea-level; water shortages; and species loss, to name just a few. I will be talking later in my remarks about the impacts of climate change. For now, I will simply say that the impacts of climate change on the natural world will continue to intensify, and will become more and more substantial over time. And it is frankly remarkable to me that people, especially in Washington, still suggest that more research is needed before we should seriously deal with climate change.

Do We Have the Capacity to Respond?

And so the logical next question is— do we have the capacity and the technologies to do something about this? And the answer again is: Yes. We do. We may not have them all but we most certainly have more than enough to get started in a very serious way.

Each of us make choices every day that can make a difference. The cars we drive, the way we choose to get to work, the lighting and the appliances we have in our homes, the companies we invest in, the letters we do or do not write to our Congress people and our local and national newspapers. Each of us has a voice and a choice. There are countless things we can do in our daily lives to limit our impact on the climate.

And I know we have the capacity to solve this problem in large part because of the companies I work with on this issue. When we established the Pew Center in 1998, we knew that corporate involvement in shaping climate solutions was going to be essential. This was a real departure at the time—there was a real wall of opposition in corporate circles to even acknowledging that climate change was a concern. This was part of a deep-seated almost ideological divide that existed between ‘corporate America and ‘environmentalists’ – you were either pro-environment or pro-business – but you weren’t both. But climate change is different- it’s bigger and more complex than other environmental issues we have dealt with. So we persevered—and, since engaging our original 13 companies to launch our Business Environmental Leadership Council, we have grown the group to 41 companies today. These are mostly Fortune 500 firms representing most industrial sectors and many are among the largest emitters of greenhouse gases.

Thinking back to those original members of the council and why they joined, I have a deep respect for the way they took a stand on this issue and defied the prevailing sentiment in industry and business. I remember a conversation I had with a CEO of one of these very large companies and I asked him why he had agreed to join the Pew Center when it was clearly not going to win him friends amongst his contemporaries and he told me that it was time to think about his legacy, his children and his grandchildren. He believed the science of climate change and felt a responsibility to the next generation.

But these are business leaders and so they were thinking about something else too: they were thinking about the bottom line, and whether they had the ability in their own operations to reduce emissions. In other words, they didn’t buy the argument that responding to climate change in a serious way would somehow bankrupt our economy.

Is it a going to be a challenge? Of course. Protecting the climate will require a decades-long commitment to develop and deploy new, low-carbon technologies around the world. But the fact is that many technologies exist right now that will allow us to begin making substantial cuts in our emissions of greenhouse gases. And I want to talk briefly about some of the most promising technologies for reducing emissions in two key sectors of the economy: electricity and transportation.

Starting with electricity, this sector produces 38 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. Most of the electricity generated by the sector is used in buildings—homes, offices and industrial facilities. It powers everything from heating and cooling systems to computers, lighting and machinery. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions related to electricity use will require far-reaching changes in how we produce and consume energy. But “far-reaching” is not the same as “impossible.”

One of the members of the Pew Center’s Business Environmental Leadership Council is Alcoa. And, over the last 20 years, this company has reduced the electricity required to produce a ton of aluminum by 7.5 percent.

Another member, IBM, has instituted energy conservation measures that resulted in a savings of 12.8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity between 1990 and 2002. The resulting reduction in carbon dioxide emissions: 7.8 million tons. And the resulting savings to the company’s bottom line: $729 million in reduced energy costs.

And since 1990, customer energy efficiency programs at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) have cumulatively saved more than 138 million megawatt hours of electricity. As a result, the company has avoided between 36 and 80 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Do we have the capacity to reduce emissions? You bet we do and these companies are showing us how. They are also showing that they can do it in ways that do not compromise economic growth.

Now, all of these examples I have talked about are on the demand side of the electricity sector. They are all focused on reducing consumption at the level of the electricity consumer. What about the supply side? Do we have the capacity and the technologies to do something there as well? And, once again, the answer is a resounding yes.

Right now, we have the ability to produce electric power and heat much more efficiently using both fossil fuels and renewable energy. We can build power plants that use a process called Integrated Gasification and Combined Cycle (IGCC). IGCC delivers efficiency gains along with reductions in air pollution by converting coal into a cleaner-burning gas. But right now, there are only two true IGCC plants in operation in the United States.

We can also build combined heat-and-power (or cogeneration) plants. Rather than wasting excess heat generated in the course of producing electricity, these cogeneration plants capture it for use in heating homes and industrial sites. The ABB Group of Companies have built approximately 1,500 small cogeneration plants in Europe. These plants produce both electricity and steam to heat nearby buildings, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent compared to coal-fired power plants. In the United States, however, cogeneration is nowhere near reaching its potential for delivering significant reductions in emissions.

And then there are renewable sources of energy. Large-scale renewable energy can be cost-competitive with other forms of conventional electricity in some cases. But renewables such as wind power, solar power and biomass still count for only a tiny share of overall electricity generation in the United States. The reason: today’s marketplace (and today’s public policy environment) favor traditional energy sources.

And then there are the technologies that show great potential in reducing emissions from power generation, but that require additional work. One example is underground storage (or sequestration) of carbon. In the IGCC power plants I mentioned, carbon can very easily be captured for long-term storage in underground geological formations. This is an enormously promising option for protecting the climate. In a nation that currently meets more that half of its electricity needs with coal, you would think we would be all over this, trying to figure out how to make sequestration work. But our efforts in this arena pale in comparison to the need. The Federal government is investing in one massive demonstration that will not be completed until 2018. What we need are multiple, smaller demonstrations that yield results more rapidly and that will affect investment decisions in the coal burning power plants that are being planned for construction over the next decade. All 130 of them.

Cars and trucks are responsible for 32 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions – but again significant reductions in these emissions can be achieved through the use of “off-the-shelf” or already existing technologies. One recent study found that commercial (and cost-effective) technologies exist right now to increase fuel economy and/or reduce tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 25 percent. Over the longer term, technologies like plug-in hybrid engines, biofuels made from agricultural products and hydrogen fuel cells promise even larger reductions.

This is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. We simply need to do our homework to develop and refine and test the full range of technologies—and, if they work, then provide the support they need to move from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Opponents of strong action to address climate change often focus on the economic costs of dealing with the issue. Yet if we look closely at the analyses they use to support their claims, we can see that the models are full of assumptions that defy reality, that the policies modeled are far more draconian than contemplated by any policymakers, and that the costs of not acting are not included. The bottom line is that, yes, significant investments are needed. And a technological revolution, which is what we need, will not be free. But addressing this issue in a reasonable and concerted way will not bankrupt our economy. Not addressing it just might.

U.S. insurance company AIG has warned of—and I quote—“far-reaching negative impacts on economies and societies worldwide” from climate change. According to the global insurance giant, Allianz, climate change already is increasing the potential for property damage at a rate of between 2 and 4 percent every year.

And it is not just about the benefits that will come with avoiding costs. Think for a moment about the economic opportunities tied to developing and deploying these new and emerging technologies I’ve talked about. GE has committed to doubling its investment in environmental technologies to $1.5 billion by 2010. That is the equivalent of starting a new Fortune 250 company focused exclusively on clean technology. This is what I call a win-win. GE sees the potential for real profits – green is green -- and I see the potential for real progress on the climate front.

If we do it right, protecting the climate could mean new industries, new markets and new jobs, as well as a new future for localities and states that successfully position themselves as centers of innovation and technology development for a low-carbon world. In many cases, however, the benefits and the opportunities tied to climate action simply are not a part of the conversation – and the result is added support for the myth that we can’t afford to do anything about this issue.

But the truth is that we can’t afford not to do this. We know what technologies will get us started on a path to reduced emissions, and we also know that there are promising technologies out there that can deliver substantial, long-term reductions as part of a global energy technology revolution.