What to do about global warming (hint – it isn’t cap-and-trade policy)

Since last year, the Energy and Commerce Committee has conducted 13 hearings on global warming. Around the start of hearing No. 3, I said I’d never back a unilateral cap-and-trade program because it would harm the economy without helping the environment. We’ve learned a lot since then, and now we know that it’s worse that I thought.

Even the news media are awakening to the problems. “When you’re trying to slow down global warming, beware of unintended consequences,” warned one recent account that went on to explain how a Dutch manufacturer laid off 40 of its 130 employees and shuts down some afternoons just to save on electricity, even though its plant is the greenest in the world. That wasn’t The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page talking. It was The Washington Post’s front page. Every day, the company’s managers bid for that day’s electricity. If it costs too much, they close early.

That story was news, but it was no surprise. The point of rationing carbon dioxide emissions is to change behavior. In Europe, the price of cap-and-trade is electric bills headed up while jobs are headed out. Now some people want to try it on us.

The real economic analysis has hardly begun, so I’m looking forward to hearings on the impact that a carbon cap will have on electric bills as plants switch to pricey natural gas, on more cancellations of new plants using clean-coal technology, and most importantly, on people’s jobs.

In a global economy, companies do their business where it makes economic sense, and energy costs are a big part of the equation. Faced with surging electric bills, truly desperate companies can do what you and I can’t — they can vote with their feet by switching production to other countries.

The irony is that when U.S. environmental policies chase companies out of America, the global environment doesn’t prosper. Developing countries always swap clean air for economic growth. China’s coal production, for example, is as explosive as its economic growth, and the Chinese add a 500-megawatt coal-fired powerplant every week. We also heard that decisions in China about where and what kind of power plants to build are decentralized, effectively uncontrolled, and we learned that less than 5 percent of China’s coal-fired electricity plants are even fitted with ordinary sulfur dioxide control equipment. Even for the ones with SO2 scrubbers, it’s an open question whether those with the equipment actually use it.

Some say if America just sets the example, everybody else will follow. But a real pollutant, sulfur dioxide, is a fine indicator of how good-example strategy doesn’t work at all. America has been scrubbing sulfur dioxide out of smokestacks for more than 20 years because it’s a real pollutant, but China still refuses.

So what are the solutions? We have plenty. These are just some of the proposals that make economic sense and provide environmental benefit, without harming our economy: 

•We should expand zero-emissions electricity generation, including nuclear power. We must solve the problem of waste storage. We know what to do; it is time to act.

•We need to expand wind and solar energy. We heard testimony about what it takes to facilitate wind projects. It turns out it wasn’t capping carbon; it is siting transmission so that remote wind and solar projects can serve loads miles away.

•We need to protect the hydroelectricity that we have now and look for ways to increase hydro output with efficiency improvements and new projects, including ones in the ocean.

•In partnership with industry, we need to fund research, development, and demonstration of carbon capture and sequestration. This includes FutureGen and coal-to-liquid projects, as well as fully funding technology to retrofit existing plants.

We also need to step up efforts on energy efficiency. We should accelerate efficiency improvements for commercial and residential energy users. Better building codes and smart metering are just two examples.

And we need efficiency improvement in transportation, too. Mobile sources — cars and trucks — must contribute to any effort to lessen carbon intensity.

The Energy and Commerce Committee wrote and approved a strong bill last year to reform automobile fuel efficiency standards and the president wants to work with us on it this year.

We can also do more to fund and encourage advanced alternative fuels and advanced vehicles such as plug-in hybrids.
It’s important to remember what we’re trying to cure. The only documented facts are that since the 1850s, the end of the “Little Ice Age,” the temperature in most, but not all, locations around the world has gone up a few degrees and that CO2 levels have risen from the mid-250 parts per million range to the mid-300 ppm range. Even at today’s levels, CO2 levels are well below known historical levels. And we all know that there have been at least three periods of global warming in the last 650,000 years, before mankind as we know it existed.

The Supreme Court’s view notwithstanding, CO2 is not a pollutant, and we should not allow ourselves to be stampeded into pretending that something we exhale is now our enemy. CO2 is also in the breath of the American economy. We should reduce it where we can, but not by overreaching and killing American jobs in the process.

Barton is ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

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