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America’s Climate Choices
Highlights of a National Academies Project and
Personal Thoughts
Robert Socolow
Princeton University
[email protected]
Forum on Climate Change Science
and Consequences
American Chemical Society National Meeting
Boston MA
August 23, 2010
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America’s Climate Choices
A congressional initiative in 2008 to:
“…investigate and study the serious and sweeping
issues relating to global climate change and make
recommendations regarding what steps must be
taken and what strategies must be adopted in
response to global climate change, including the
science and technology challenges thereof.”
Products already: A summit (March 2009) and four
reports from “panels.”
Product in progress: A Final Report from the
overarching “Committee on America’s Climate
Choices” (of which I am a member).
Information at http://americasclimatechoices.org
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Four panel reports are out
Advancing the
Science of Climate
Change
Adapting to the
Impacts of Climate
Change
“Science panel”
“Adapting panel”
Limiting the
Magnitude of Future
Climate Change
Informing an
Effective Response
to Climate Change
“Limiting panel”
“Informing panel”
Available at http://www.nap.edu
3
Science Panel: Sorry, it’s real.
CONCLUSION #1: Climate
change is occurring, is
caused largely by human
activities, and poses
significant risks for a
broad range of human
and natural systems.
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Science Panel: “A new era of
climate research”
The nation needs a comprehensive and integrative
climate change science enterprise that not only
contributes fundamental understanding but also
informs and expands America’s climate choices.
Scientists need to engage stakeholders/citizens in
order to build trust, access local knowledge, and
learn about priorities.
The federal climate change research program
should develop, deploy, and maintain a
comprehensive observing system that supports
all aspects of understanding and responding to
climate change.
5
Never in history has the work of so few
led to so much being asked of so many!
The “few” are the climate science researchers.
The “many” are the rest of us.
Understandably, we wish we lived on a
larger planet, with a larger atmosphere so that our
emissions would be less significant –
and also a planet with larger fisheries,
bigger forests, more abundant ground water, so
that all our actions mattered less.
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Managing Risk
Climate science today sends a difficult message:
1. Both mild and severe climate change is consistent with each future
global atmospheric gas concentration. This frustrating lack of
predictability has its roots in poorly understood feedbacks (notably
regarding clouds, ice, and the biosphere).
2. Climate science cannot now provide tight upper bounds on the
probability of very bad outcomes. Climate change could be
extremely disruptive – well beyond what is conveyed in descriptions
of mean expectations.
3. Scientists are not on the verge of breakthroughs that will result in a
significantly better predictability. We are not only flying blind, but the
fog is not about to lift.
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A challenge to
the educators of chemists
Needed: Chemists who understand:
the planetary scale – the science and technology
required to achieve insight into “fitting on the Earth”
rich and poor people, rich and poor countries
future and present
human domination vs. accommodation
ambiguity
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Limiting Panel: Prompt,
sustained efforts
A robust U.S. response requires:
• An inclusive national framework
for aligning the goals and efforts
of actors at all levels
• Aggressive pursuit of all major
near-term emission reduction
opportunities and R&D to create
new options
• Iterative management of policy
responses
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Limiting Panel: U.S. budget to 2050
‘Representative’ budget: 170–200 Gt CO2-eq, 2012–2050.
Business-as-usual consumes this budget well before 2050.
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Limiting Panel: Tough goals
are real hard
Meeting an emissions budget in the 170–200 Gt
CO2-eq range could be technically possible, but it is
very difficult.
Essentially all available options (e.g. efficiency,
renewables, CCS, nuclear, biofuels) would need to
be deployed at levels close to what is estimated as
technically possible; and these estimates are based
on very optimistic assumptions.
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Limiting Panel: Recommendations*
1. Adopt a mechanism for setting an economy-wide
price on carbon.
2. Complement the carbon price with policies to:
– Realize the practical potential for energy efficiency
and low-emission energy sources;
– Establish the feasibility of carbon capture and storage
and new nuclear technologies;
– Accelerate the retirement, retrofitting or replacement
of GHG emission-intensive infrastructure.
3. Create new technology choices by investing heavily
in research and crafting policies to stimulate
innovation.
*first three of seven recommendations
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An idealization of mitigation
E(t)
BAU: Business As Usual
CPM: Constant-Pace Mitigation
Emission
rate
BAU
CPM
Time
Today, approximately half of emissions are retained in the
atmosphere and half move to other reservoirs.
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Procrastination and “Pace”
E(t)
Procrastination can lead to…
BAU
CPM
E(t)
BAU: Business As Usual
CPM: Constant-Pace Mitigation
E(t)
BAU
BAU
CPM
(1) Extra total emissions, because
pace cannot be increased,
CPM
OR (2) Constant total emissions,
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with a faster pace.
Every strategy can be
implemented well or poorly
Every “solution” has a dark side.
Conservation
Renewables
“Clean coal”
Nuclear power
Geoengineering
Regimentation
Competing uses of land
Mining: worker and land impacts
Nuclear proliferation
Technological hegemony
Risk Management: Because mitigation and adaptation are not risk-free,
the lowest conceivable greenhouse-concentration targets are not optimal.
The risks of disruption from climate change must be traded against the
risks of disruption from “solutions.”
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Adapting Panel: Go for
iterative risk management
There is a real risk that impacts could
emerge rapidly and powerfully.
Mobilizing now to increase the
nation’s adaptive capacity can be
viewed as an insurance policy
against an uncertain future.
Key sectors: ecosystems, agriculture
and forestry, water, health,
transportation, energy, and coastal
regions.
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Adapting Panel: The short term can
borrow from climate variability
Example: The Hot Weather–Health Watch/Warning
System, Philadelpia, 1995
Whenever the National Weather Service issues a heat
wave warning, local media are required to provide
information on how to avoid heat-related illnesses and how
to help elderly persons.
Those involved include
Philadelphia Corporation for the Aging
Department of Public Health
Local utility company and water department (halt service suspensions)
Fire Department Emergency Medical Service (increase staffing)
Senior centers (extend hours of operation of air-conditioned facilities)
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Adapting panel: The long term
requires transformational change
Examples of transformational adaptations:
Movement of people and facilities away from
vulnerable areas
Changes in ecosystem and land management
objectives
Revisions of water-rights law
Contingency planning for high-impact/low-probability
outcomes requires vigilant monitoring to detect early
signals and continuous assessment of the adequacy of
responses. Adaptation needs to be adaptable.
18
What is a crisis?
Needed: much more effort to describe vividly:
What losing control of the planet looks like.
What taking charge of the planet looks like.
Is losing control of the planet mostly about moving cities
inland? About losing ecosystems?
Does taking charge of the planet require a new level of
planetary governance?
19
Informing Panel: Improved
information systems
• Federal coordination of
diverse decision-making
• Institutions that will produce
improved tools
20
Informing Panel: All sorts of
decisionmakers
Climate response is and will always be decentralized.
Federal roles include:
–
–
–
–
–
clear leadership
regular evaluation and assessment
aggregation and dissemination of “best practices”
development and diffusion of decision-support tools
training of researchers and practitioners.
The federal government must avoid preemption that
discourages productive decisions by other actors.
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Informing Panel: Paths toward
better decision-support tools
The federal government’s immense infrastructure
for data collection and analysis – including
satellites, climate models, and in situ monitoring
systems – can be enhanced via national climateservice institutions.
These institutions can provide diverse users with
high quality, harmonized, accessible information
at multiple scales.
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The Planetary Perspective
The ACS needs to understand not only America’s
climate choices but also the world’s.
23
Per-capita fossil-fuel CO2 emissions, 2005
World emissions: 27 billion tons CO2
AVERAGE TODAY
STABILIZATION
1-
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Source: IEA WEO 2007
Four ways to emit 4 ton CO2/yr
(today’s global per capita average)
Activity
Amount producing 4 ton CO2/yr emissions
a) Drive
24,000 km/yr, 5 liters/100km (45 mpg)
b) Fly
24,000 km/yr
c) Heat home
Natural gas, ample U.S. home, average climate
d) Lights
300 kWh/month when all coal-power
(600 kWh/month, natural-gas-power)
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“Stabilization”: 1 ton CO2/yr per capita
It is not sufficient to limit emissions in the prosperous
parts of the world and allow the less fortunate to catch
up. Such an outcome would overwhelm the planet.
The emissions of the future rich must eventually equal
the emissions of today’s poor, …
…not the other way around.
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The developing world will decide
what kind of planet we live on.
For a while longer, the industrialized countries will lead.
But countries now industrializing will dominate global
environmental problem-solving over this century.
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Prospicience
Prospicience: “The art [and science] of looking ahead.”
In the past 50 years we have become aware of the
history of our Universe, our Earth, and life.
Can we achieve a comparable understanding of
human civilization at various future times: 50 years
ahead – vs. 500 years and vs. 5000 years?
We have scarcely begun to ask: What are we on Earth
to do?
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Fitting on the Earth
Our planet, Earth, is the only one we have.
Fortunately:
Our science has discovered threats fairly early;
We can identify a myriad of helpful
technologies;
We have a moral compass that tells us to care
not only about those alive today but also
about the collective future of our species.
What has seemed too hard becomes what
simply must be done.
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