We've work to do.

How do we pay to expand jobs making solar panels? More solar means being able to shut down polluting coal plants.

Isn't it time to make polluting industries pay for their pollution?

The money needed to move to a cleaner energy source can come from a tax on pollution.

Thats the funny thing about it all. No matter how much greenie energy you bring online (paid for by dirty energy taxes and built with dirty energy power), if the magic market doesn't make it cheaper (from building to generating to storage) humanity will continue to burn hydrocarbons as long as they are allowed. Green energy just basically means more energy, which means more available energy per capita, which means faster growth, which means a higher demand for more energy in the future, which means planet death.

Make fossil fuels more expensive via a tax. And make that tax high enough so that solar is the cheapest source of energy.

It would be creating a new market floor on which we can stand to be able to close coal burning plants.

And that's infrastructure that is built by burning dirty fuels, taking decades to even reach carbon neutrality

Essentially, the point is to make "dirty" domestic production more expensive than ("clean" production + the building of "clean" production infrastructure, which requires "dirty" production)

What a complete and absolute clusterfuck humanity has created; I am blown away that any of this makes sense to anyone as a way "forward" to more infinite production (green, dirty, or whatever-the-fuck)

But if we used solar power to build solar power....?

At least if we actually did something about co2 we could tell our kids that we actually did something about co2. What will we tell our children?

All that matters is if you can reduce the area under the graph of our aggregate global carbon emissions during some amount of time (since atmospheric carbon stays in the environment for maybe 100 years after its put there).

Basically, we are discussing two scenarios here if we are to attempt to keep economic growth at a constant during the transition (meaning we must keep the energy devoted to the conventional economy at the same level as it currently is):

1. Vastly increase production to create a "green" energy infrastructure, such that future energy is less carbon intense. Graphically speaking, this would lead to a very sharp uptick and a much quicker decline in atmospheric carbon emissions (presuming of course that mankind would even quit using hydrocarbons, rather than utilize all available energy for hyper-growth, similar to past patterns).

2. Keep carbon emission increases relatively constant for long periods of time to fuel the conventional economy while slowly building "green" infrastructure with only clean energy. This would lead to a steadily increasing level of emissions until the green infrastructure grew enough to negate and reverse our current growth rate in emissions (if it ever could with such a low growth rate). I don't even think it would be possible to do this, considering the extraction of the materials required to make this green infrastructure (mining and refining steel with the green energy available today would be a futile practice). In fact, this would almost be like carrying on as normal.

In any case, during the next 3 decades while we hurdle to a +4C world, the area under each graph could look relatively exactly the same even if the curves are very different. In any case, burning even more emissions now to maybe reduce aggregate atmospheric carbon 50-75 years seems like an actual act of insanity if we could be in grave danger in just 20-30 years from now.

I think no matter how this is approach--as long as it is approached by civilization--the planet and its organisms are fucked.

The only real solution is to approach this matter outside of the paradigm of civilization, and to truly focus on the only plausible way to reduce the area under that graph: tangible and dramatic reductions in emissions immediately on a global basis. IOW, reduce energy consumption immediately and start an organized global decline back towards sustainability.

This cannot be done at the same time as both heavy investments in green energy and keeping our global economy growing (both goal being championed by the president). In fact, either of these are incompatible with an immediate reduction in carbon emissions, as they both involve emitting more GHGs that will be in our atmosphere for decades to come.

Good points. What will Obama do?

We surely need to do something. The consequences are already loaded into the system and change will be forthcoming and it looks like it very well could be harsher than most present day predictions.

In the OP link was a statement that goes against your course of action and we have seen it time and again: ""We must continue to grow"". Solar is imo, the only way to a better end. Solar and reduced consumption.

What will we do?

We will squander this oil-driven time of necessity away, forgetting to teach small communities how to feed themselves and be resilient in the face of change. Politicians will squander this time to garner power and votes, while the constituencies they serve start facing mounting problems that prove the true irrelevance of politics. Ultimately, either declining EROEI or degrading food systems (or both) will send civilization hurtling into a disaster with no proper preparations made, and billions dying in the chaos and famine that will ensue. While mankind will search for sustainability by necessity, the ecosystem will no longer be thriving to the point of supporting the amount of life that depends upon it, and swaths of humans and other organisms will perish. This is our future.

We are standing on a train track, telling science that it can only take civilization from our cold dead hands. Science doesn't blink.

impoverishment of ordinary people.

do diddley about global warming, either.

Also, I'd hazard that all markets in some ways are based on "dubious assets" be they homes, ships, or horses!

Forget global warming. I'd just like to see a blue sky daily here in SoCal.

I'm willing to trade a short-term blow to polluting business for better air quality (clean technology will in the long-run offset this). Moreover, as a micro argument the logic behind cap-and-trade is fool proof (better air-quality in California), but as a macro argument it's probably debatable (California alone will not stop global warming).

If not cap and trade as a governmental approach to the problem of global warming, then what exactly do you propose?

what does "polluters like california" mean? a state isn't a polluter; business and other activities within a state are the polluters.

i propose taxing and regulating polluters and if necessary providing grants to achieve standards. also more research & state development of non-polluting technologies, changes in building/development standards and other social changes as seem appropriate.

old school, i know, but it's worked before.

ps: biggest single polluter = the us military.

1. You know what my standard for ending an internet discussion is? When the other person suggests I didn't read the link they posted. I read your link and found it to be thoroughly superficial in its argumentation at best and moronic self-serving denialism at worst.

2. Dude. I'm not even sure where you're going with your second point. "The pollution wouldn't go elsewhere if other places stood up to polluters like [the State of] California [has done in its cap-and-trade program]... - now that I filled in the obligatory blanks, does it make sense to you?

3.

it's lots more important to punish smokers and fat people than oil companies.

Seems so simple yet time and time again we listen to the water carriers. Can't do this can't do that as long as it affects the rich.

It almost seems like a losing cause since we never learn that those who control the media control the framing of the discussion. Those who control the framing control the future.

The difference being everyone will be effected by this. Do you think oil companies will just eat this cost ? You can choose not to eat fattening foods or smoke, oil is not an option. This cost will effect everyone, hitting low income people hardest.

Not just with the Carbon Tax, but with everything. We campaign left, promising to do so many things. President Obama told us on Election Night 2008 that that was the day that the seas stopped rising.

Environment was one of those issues we campaigned for. We wanted to fix things. Yet when we govern, we govern from the far right in the pockets of the very people we defeated. President Obama proudly told the world that Robme was wrong, we were producing more domestic oil than ever before. Why weren't we able to say that a higher percentage came from Solar? Why weren't we able to proudly declare that a higher percentage came from non polluting wind. Even Nuclear power has been trumpeted by a man who once promised to see a better world. Yeah, a world where cities join Prypiat and Fukishima as ghost towns where the radiation will keep us away for Generations.

We campaign left to get the base out. Folks like you and me get out and work our asses off to get them elected. Then we get the elected to Washington, and the first thing we hear is how impossible it is to change anything. WTF?

In 1961 President Kennedy inspired the nation to take on the challenge to go to the Moon. Not because it was easy, but because it was hard. That was historically speaking, the last hard thing we ever did. Never again would any Politician stand up and say we were going to do something because it was hard, and the challenge was a worthy one. From now on, the word Hard was used to explain why we wouldn't do something.

We can't do it, it's just too hard. Those words may not be actually spoken, but they're behind every excuse we get from the elected officials we send to represent us. It's just easier to keep the Oil Companies in business. It's just easier to keep everything pretty much as it is. We won the election, and we still lose.

Still hoping for some real political change here. So far all we have is climate change.

It would be a wonderful gift from our leaders were they to present us with more than a few shiny pennies.

We seem to be on it, and we can't change course. If we elect a Repug, we stomp on the gas to get to the world they dream of. A fascist based Plutocracy. Where the Government isn't for everyone, just the 1% who matters. (Yes, that's from the Cinemax show Hunted but it is the way the Repugs think isn't it?) When we are able to get Democrats into office, we tap the brakes, we slow down a bit, but we're still headed toward the same destination on the same road. One of my often expressed pet peeves is the PATRIOT ACT. Even if you admit that those who voted for it originally did so out of the best of intentions, you have to admit that the monster created by that act is an abomination. So why do we not kill the abomination? Why we might look like we're not tough on Terrorism. I've never seen anyone swear an oath to take an office to do anything other than defend the Constitution. Yet we happily vote to toss the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments out the window for the PATRIOT ACT.

I guess I'm calling on Democrats to do something other than tap the brakes a bit. I want them to slam those brakes on, and shift that thing into reverse. But I can see already, we're not going to do it. We're going to avoid doing it, because it's just too hard. Do you ever wonder what History will say about us in a hundred years? Read History books today, about the morons in charge as the First World War started up. Have we learned nothing from their mistakes? Are we doomed to keep making the same mistakes over and over again every generation? Sometimes, I think we are.

A carbon tax will reward Exxon and its natural gas operations...while at the same time... it will hold down the price of coal , hurting production.

Exxon has the largest contingent of lobbyists in Washington among all industries, and they WILL GET what they want.

I think many will be surprised how fast Obama does a reversal and signs a carbon tax bill.

Therefore a carbon tax would be placed on NG?

You have certainly made an impression and thanks for your concern and kick. Have you learned how to rec yet?