(Cross-posted from The Courage Campaign)
Sunday night we all watched the man who should be president take the world stage to spread the message of his now Academy Award-winning film An Inconvenient Truth: there are measures that each of us can take to slow global warming and it is our duty to do so.
In his column Colorless Green Ideas (behind firewall,) NY Times columnist Paul Krugman uses his own platform to do the same and in so doing provides some historical context that demonstrates how California can serve as a model for the nation on tackling global warming.
He begins by paraphrasing Gore's oft-heard refrain:
The factual debate about whether global warming is real is, or at least should be, over. The question now is what to do about it.
Krugman can barely hide his contempt for those that still deny the climate crisis. And he takes little solace from the fact that fewer and fewer of them seem to deny the phenomenon's existence outright preferring instead to resist the notion that humans can ever hope to have any effect and to insist that such an effort would come at too high a cost.
More over the flip…
As Krugman summarizes for us, their argument goes as follows:
any serious attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions is politically and economically impossible…[because] any substantial cut in energy use would require a drastic change in the way we live.
Well, Krugman calls BS on this claim by citing an example of an economy that has
managed to combine rising living standards with a substantial decline in per capita energy consumption, and managed to keep total carbon dioxide emissions more or less flat for two decades, even as both its economy and its population grew rapidly. And it achieved all this without fundamentally changing a lifestyle centered on automobiles and single-family houses.
What magical land could Krugman possibly be referring to? Why, California, of course.
It all started during the energy crisis of the 70s during which the nation as a whole engaged in a concerted conservation effort. At that point, California's energy consumption was about on par with the rest of the country, but it wasn't long before California and the nation took different paths. As success nationwide bred complacency:
improvements in auto mileage came to an end, while electricity consumption continued to rise rapidly, driven by the growing size of houses, the increasing use of air-conditioning and the proliferation of appliances.
But California continued to pursue conservation policy, which has led us to:
Today, the average Californian uses about a third less total energy than the average American, uses less than 60 percent as much electricity, and is responsible for emitting only about 55 percent as much carbon dioxide.
And California's recipe for success:
In some cases conservation was mandated directly, through energy efficiency standards for appliances and rules governing new construction. Also, regulated power companies were given new incentives to promote conservation, via rule changes that “decoupled” their profits from the amount of electricity they sold.
What's notable for Krugman about what California has done right on energy since the 70s is how sort of invisible the policies are. He calls them "drab," "colorless" and "wonky,", which, of course, is the point. These measures that California has pursued have NOT required a change in the day to day lifestyle of Californians, yet they have significantly cut energy consumption and carbon emissions throughout the state…well, cut them significantly as compared to the rest of the country anyway, which, as Krugman reminds us, isn't saying a whole hell of a lot.
He provides a reality check, lest our California heads get too big:
Even if America as a whole had matched California’s conservation efforts, we’d still be emitting about as much carbon dioxide now as we were in 1990. That’s too much.
But it's an optimistic story Krugman is telling, one in which California serves as a shining example for naysayers who insist that any significant policy to halt global warming will alter our lifestyles too much to be politically viable.
California’s experience shows that serious conservation is a lot less disruptive, imposes much less of a burden, than the skeptics would have it. And the fact that a state government, with far more limited powers than those at Washington’s disposal, has been able to achieve so much is a good omen for our ability to do a lot to limit climate change, if and when we find the political will.
And luckily, as Al Gore likes to say:
political will is a renewable resource.
I think it’s up for renewal in 2008, what do you think?
