PLEASE FORWARD TO YOUR MIT CONTACTS

Dear friends,

If any of you could get into President Obama's clean energy speech at MIT's Kresge Auditorium this Friday Oct 23rd (starts at noon), please consider asking him the following questions.  If there will be any Q & A time at all, each person could only ask one (if you rush to the microphone fast).  Here I'll also list some expected non-answers, in the hopes that more of you could follow up with suggested questions and press harder.

A hyperlinked version of this message is available here: http://securegreenfuture.org/content/mit-alert

Thank you!

Maggie Zhou, PhD
Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities-
Secure Green Future project
www.securegreenfuture.org
www.climateSOS.org
781-316-8283

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Q1: Cap and trade has been tried and found less effective than direct regulations and pollution taxes, and is highly non-transparent, fraud- and game- prone, and threatens to lead to future market crashes from speculations and carbon derivative markets.  Trading ensures that the "cap" actually is also the "floor", since reduced emissions on the part of any entity or due to innovation, will be canceled out by increased emissions from others due to reduced prices.  In contrast, rule-based regulations, together with a revenue-neutral carbon tax coupled with equal dividend return, as advocated by NASA's James Hansen, is simple, transparent, protects low income consumers, and, when coupled with an annual tax rate adjustment based on actual emission records, can achieve a real cap.  Why have you not advocated for such an alternative?

Likely Answers:
A1: Any new tax is not politically feasible.
A2: It's important to have a firm cap.

Follow-up questions:
To A1: It has been implemented in British Columbia and allowed the re-election of its implementer.  It has been done in the entire Scandinavia block for many years.  When most of the carbon tax revenue is returned equally to consumers, low income families come out ahead because of their relatively lower energy consumption.  Why is it that you don't even talk about this superior alternative?

To A2: Any cost-containing measures in a cap and trade system will simply blow up the cap, and both the House-passed and the Senate-proposed climate legislation (Waxman-Markey & Boxer-Kerry) contain such measures.  By not returning most of the revenue to consumers, the cap is also made extremely weak, proposing a completely inadequate speed of emission reductions.  Why not use a revenue-neutral carbon tax-dividend which can then quickly reach high carbon prices corresponding to a very strong cap, while still protecting particularly the vulnerable part of the population?

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Q2: A recent United Nations Environment Program report found that even if all the emission reduction pledges from countries around the world, including the US House-passed bill Waxman-Markey, are completely implemented under the most optimistic assumptions, the planet will still warm almost 4 degrees C by 2100.  IPCC told us that 2 degrees C is the most that we could conceivably tolerate, while 1 degree C is what we need to stay below if we wish to preserve the world's coral reefs and ecosystems that depend on them.  Why do you support a bill that doesn't even aim for stabilizing greenhouse gases at 450 ppm, the latter only produces a 50% odds of staying below 2 degrees?  Why does the US delegation to the UN insist that countries abandon trying to agree to binding emission reduction targets, and instead each country propose their own?  Why are you not talking about the dire predictions of science, and calling for a war-time mobilization to fight climate change, stop war spending used for securing fossil fuels and "American Interests" abroad, and instead invest in a carbon free, sustainable economy - don't you agree that this will be the best way to bring all other countries on board, and to generate "political will" here and worldwide?

Likely Answers:
A1: Although the short term emission reduction target of Waxman-Markey falls short, the long term (2050) target is consistent with IPCC science, and we need to get our foot in the door first, then work on strengthening it.
A2: China & India are not going to agree to binding targets, so it's more productive for each country to propose their own.

Follow-up questions:
To A1: The 2050 target of Waxman-Markey also falls short of IPCC's emission reduction target for 450 ppm (and we need to return below 350 ppm, not stabilizing at 450 ppm).  Most importantly, it's the cumulative emission over the years that determines CO2 concentration in the air.  If you miss the short term targets, it means you use up your carbon budget quickly, and your long term target will have to be far more stringent (in fact, you need negative emissions) than what IPCC estimated, just to stay at 450 ppm.  Given that under cap and trade, a cap is also a floor, emissions will not fall faster than the cap, how could you honestly claim that we'll be able to strengthen a bill in later decades when you are no longer in office, and when our short term indulgence of polluters already diminished our last chance of aveting climate catastrophe?

To A2: Developed countries are responsible for the majority of greenhouse gases in the air today, and USA is responsible for the largest share of cumulative historic emissions, and still is one of the highest per capita emitters in the world, with many times more emissions per capita than China or India.  If US is not commiting to a strong domestic emission reduction target, how could we place the burden on developing countries to commit to anything?  What if we commit to targets consistent with returning greenhouse gas concentration to below 350 ppm, and commit to reducing our own emissions, not using unreliable "offsets" somewhere else to allow us to continue with our own emissions?  If you are worried about political feasibility, how about tying some of our commitments (in our legislation) to commitments that should be reasonably expected from China & India?  Once we have that signed into our law, wouldn't that give you the best talking point on the international negotiating table?

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Q3: Carbon Capture & Storage is expensive, not available yet for years, uses 20% extra energy, and underground storage is not at all reliable.  A Greenpeace report found that leakage will be inevitable, through natural vents, and wells drilled into the depleted oil fields where CO2 will be stored.  It's not only going to undo the carbon mitigation through storage, it also threatens the health of soil, aquatic life in surface waters, and even the safety of human population above storage sites.  Coal mining will always be environmentally destructive, and coal ash will continue to be toxic and no one wants it in their backyard.  Why do you adopt the coal industry's greenwashing and call CCS "Clean Coal" technology?  Why do you not support leaving all fossil fuels in the ground, which, given the dire scientific predictions, is the least we must do?  Why are we still developing tar sand, oil shales, and other dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fossil fuels?
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Q4: Our industrialized, modern lifestyle that depletes both resources and waste sinks is clearly unsustainable, and we are at the brink of ecological collapse and climate chaos (if we haven't crossed the threshold already), thanks to our blind faith in the free market, and the mantra of endless economic growth.  What we need is rapid contraction and conservation.  When are you going to abandon stimulating the corporate bottom line, and instead embracing respect for laws of nature, and lead us in building a sustainable economy in harmony with our environment, that creates millions of jobs that are good for the people and the planet?

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