| Candidates' stances on energy & climate |
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2008-01-09, 17:20:06
The most important part, as I see it, is the overall reduction in carbon dioxide emissions that the candidates are shooting for over the next several decades. According to this chart, all the viable Democrats—Clinton, Obama, and Edwards—have the same goals: putting in a cap-and-trade system and reducing the absolute amount of CO2 emissions to 80% below 1990 levels. To state it differently, that's about 20 times greater reduction than the Kyoto Protocol has called for from most countries (but the U.S. isn't a part of it). Or it means that by 2050, we would emit less one-fifth the amount of CO2 that we do now. Also, beware politicians, such as Bush, who talk about "carbon intensity." That means CO2 emissions per dollar of GDP. So in a growing economy like ours, CO2 intensity is going down, while the absolute amount of emissions is going up. Long before Bush came on the scene, CO2 intensity has been going down—that is, we squeeze more GDP out of a unit of energy now than we did in the past. What we need is a reversal of direction, where we ramp down the absolute amount of CO2 emissions. And we shouldn't forget about other greenhouse gases such as methane. Although these other gases won't affect climate nearly as much in the long run, in the short run, they may warm the world as much as carbon dioxide. What's more, it may be much easier to slash emissions of these other greenhouse gases, since they're not as central to the world's economies as CO2 emissions are. |
