Look for Winners in Solving Global Warming
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Des Moines Register - December 10, 2008
Guest Column by Howard A. Learner
Solving our global-warming problems is the moral, economic, policy, political and technological challenge of our times. Fortunately, there are smart, clean renewable-energy and energy-efficiency developments and clean-car innovation strategies that are good for the economy, create new green jobs and improve the environment.
The naysayers keep arguing that reducing global-warming pollution is too expensive and too difficult. We’ve heard this refrain before: Seat belts supposedly would dramatically increase the costs of cars, make no safety difference and wouldn’t be used by drivers and riders. Catalytic converters wouldn’t really reduce pollution and would make cars unaffordable. Reducing sulfur dioxide that causes acid rain would cause electric rates to skyrocket and not help the environment very much.
Well, look what happened:
- Seat belts are an incidental car-cost component, have saved many lives, reduced the severity of accidents and lowered insurance costs.
- Catalytic converters have greatly reduced harmful health impacts from dirty air, and lowered health-care costs.
- The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which set up the cap-and-trade program to reduce sulfur-dioxide pollution from coal plants, triggered a wave of technological advances – as well as simple engineering tweaks and fixes – that have reduced acid rain. Instead of costing the industry’s estimated $2,000 to $3,000 per ton, sulfur-dioxide pollution credits are now trading at just $136 per ton. This pollution-reduction strategy has resulted in demonstrable environmental improvements for our rivers, lakes and forests, and reduced public-health harms.
So when you hear that economic disaster will somehow befall the United States if we step up and act to help solve our global-warming problems, consider the facts, history and American capacity for technological innovation – especially with the right mix of regulatory and financial-market incentives.
Solving global warming may be very painful for the more polluting industries and their workers. But it won’t always be difficult and costly. There will be economic winners, too, in the growing green economy.
Consider the example of lighting-efficiency improvements. Here’s what happens when Americans convert their old incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).
CFLs use 75 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs to produce the same amount of illumination, saving us money on electricity bills. They reduce carbon dioxide and other pollution from coal plants, improving our health and environment, and they last seven to 10 times longer.
Replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs will reduce overall electricity demand by about 5 to 6 percent. Since coal plants cause about 40 percent of the region’s global-warming pollution, this one change alone – which saves people money – will reduce overall carbon-dioxide pollution from 2 percent to 2.5 percent.
That doesn’t even include the additional economic savings and pollution reductions achieved when businesses, city halls, hospitals, schools, parks and sports facilities install more efficient lighting. Commercial light technologies for offices today are much more energy efficient, with high-tech control systems and ballasts.
Coming to market next are super-efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which will last longer and can produce light in any color. LEDs are now marketed as a high-end product, but prices will fall soon.
A quiet market revolution is taking place through sophisticated lighting technologies and more efficient appliances, computers, motors and controls. We’re at a tipping point, as higher energy prices and technological advances kick in.
Lighting technologies alone won’t be nearly enough to solve our global-warming problems. But they are a good start, and point the way toward additional opportunities and innovations for global-warming solutions that are good for the economy.
What’s next? Watch for surviving (we hope!) American automakers to pivot to market plug-in electric hybrids and other clean cars sooner than previously advertised, for breakthroughs in solar energy and for advancements in new, more efficient battery technologies.
It won’t be easy, but we can get going faster and further on global-warming solutions than the naysayers are arguing.
Tags: Media Center Op-Ed Articles, Solving Global Warming
