NASA Scientist: Phase Out Power from Coal

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CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) attributes the drought to natural climate variability.

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NASA Scientist: Phase Out Power from Coal

Written by Miranda Marquit

Developing renewable energy alternatives is key to the future.

NASA Scientist: Phase Out Power from Coal

Photo: davipt, Creative Commons, Flickr

This was one of the more interesting videos that I have seen in a long time. Dave Neubert sent it my way, and I found it enlightening. Here, a NASA scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, points out that at the rate we are going, climate change will move beyond our ability to fix the problems we caused within a relatively short amount of time.

There are a couple things about this video that caught my attention:

That we should focus on developing renewable energy, and stop using coal altogether.
That Big Oil and coal execs should be put on trial for crimes against nature and humanity.

I really like the idea of developing renewable energy. As Congressman Markey points out toward the end of the video, we have all sorts of technology available to use today. Some of the technology is even advanced enough that it is almost as cost-efficient as the fossil fuels we currently use (especially if the price of oil continues to surge upward). And we could develop this technology further. Instead of focusing on how to make oil cheaper, we should be focusing on how to make other, cleaner and safer sources of energy more cost-efficient. But, as the video points out, even Hansen despairs of a serious effort to truly wean us off of oil.

Which is why he is taking aim at coal. Highly publicized disasters in recent years have highlighted the dangers attendant to coal mining, and many people recognize coal as dirty. Additionally, coal is not seen as ingrained in our way of life (despite the large amount of electricity that comes from coal powered plants). This would make targeting coal more practical and doable than trying to take on Big Oil and all its allies in the government.

The second thing that caught my attention was the assertion that maybe Big Oil and coal execs should be put on trial for crimes against nature and humanity. An interesting proposition. The reasoning is that executives are aware of how much damage they are doing, but they still work to mislead the public and push their agenda of polluting carbon emissions that affect the climate and people's health rather than invest in renewable energy. Personally, I think that such a step would be a little melodramatic and counter-productive.

Instead, I agree with the idea of attaching a cost to such "externalities" as carbon emissions, as proposed by Christopher Meyer on the Harvard Business blog post addressing a definition of "sustainability." Here is what he points out:

If you bought a car battery and paid nothing to sequester its toxic materials upon disposal, the costs to society of dealing with it—whether counted as health care for people getting heavy metal poisoning or their harder-to-measure suffering—were deemed externalities because neither the customer nor the battery maker paid this cost.

Now, in many states, that externality has been internalized. The customer purchases a $25 certificate licensing her to dispose of the battery, and she is buying with knowledge of the full cost of the product. Likewise, the impact on the atmosphere of shooting carbon through a smokestack was an externality; carbon taxes and cap and trade systems are proposed mechanisms for internalizing the costs.

An activity is sustainable when all costs are internalized, because if the costs are too high, the activities stop.

I also think that such costs should be accompanied by incentives. Right now, for example, Big Oil receives government subsidies by virtue of the fact that it exists and presumably provides a needed product to Americans. What if, instead of having an incentive to drill oil, Big Oil received an incentive to develop renewable technologies? There would be fiscal reward for developing and energy source that is practical, cost-efficient, clean and safe. And a cost for continuing to engage in dangerous and polluting practices while obtaining energy to sell.

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