Cold logic about global warming

More and more voices are joining the chorus demanding action against global warming. Curiously, these voices are much louder in the rich world than in the poor, which is odd, since poor countries are in so much greater danger from the phenomenon. That strongly suggests that short-term economics will continue to trump long-term global climate planning. I would argue that this is true in rich countries too - just look at Europe, which is building 50 new coal-fired power plants of its own. Even the supposedly most enlightened and forward-looking nations in the world know exactly where their bottom line is.

Lots of people believe - explicitly or implicitly - that economics is a force that can somehow be overcome. They feel like "If we just work together for the common benefit, we can overcome the forces of petty self-interest." Well, that's wrong. It's never been right throughout all of history, and it's wrong in the case of climate change. When Godzilla comes stomping through town, you don't see millions of people charging him with baseball bats. You see millions of people running to save their own skins. Sure, the army fights Godzilla - a top-down action by government, approved by the people, is the closest thing we have to collective action, but that's assuming you have a government...

So here's what I consider to be the cold, hard truth about global warming: Government restrictions on the use of fossil fuels will do precisely zip. Zero. Nada. If there were a world government, we might have a chance of averting global warming by top-down regulatory effort, but there is no world government, and will not be one in the next 30 years.

All the oil in the ground that it is feasible to recover is going to get burned. It's the only natural liquid energy source on Earth, which makes it easy to get out of the ground and easy to transport and easy to convert into fuel for vehicles. And we already have plenty of wells pumping it out. Maybe if there were 100 years of cheap oil left, we could change our oil infrastructure in time for it to make a difference, but there's not - we're at the peak. The amount of oil burned in the 21st century will be roughly equal to what was burned in the 20th. If we refuse to burn it, China or India or Brazil or Russia will burn it, and the carbon will be in the atmosphere.

The real problem - and the problem we can do something about - is coal. Coal releases more carbon into the air than oil, along with lots more of other types of pollution (ever been to Beijing?). Coal mines also despoil huge tracts of land. But coal has a weakness - being a solid fuel, it's expensive to dig up, and it's not easy to use in vehicles (you have to turn it into electricity). This is why, with only the resources of our single nation, we can defeat the coal menace decisively.

The key, I've maintained for a while, is solar power. Concentrated solar power plants are springing up all throughout the U.S., but costs are still a bit higher than coal. The cost disadvantage isn't a technology problem, but a manufacturing problem - the kind of cost we know we can bring way down by spending a little money. So we need to spend that money. Because if unsubsidized CSP becomes significantly cheaper than coal, then why would any nation pay for coal-fired power plants? The only way our species is going to leave all that coal just sitting in the ground is if there's an infinite alternative source of cheaper, easier electricity. If the United States acts on its own to bring the cost of CSP way down, the coal menace is automatically defanged all over the world, forever.

That, in my somewhat but not totally pessimistic view, is the best thing we can do to significantly reduce long-term carbon emissions (population control, reforestation, and carbon capture are others). But oil can't be stopped before it's all in the sky.