A Transition in Energy Use Is a Moral Imperative

It didn’t take the recent release of the fourth National Climate Assessment or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report to alert us to the not-so-slowly unfolding ecological and economic catastrophe that is anthropogenic climate change. I’ve witnessed these impacts firsthand through my climate change tours in our national parks. Anyone observing the world and following the science with even a shred of intellectual honesty has long known the dangers that a rapidly warming world presents to modern civilization, and supporting ecosystems, around the world. It has become even clearer that the transition to a climate-resilient, low-carbon economy is a moral imperative.

Recent enthusiasm behind the concept of a Green New Deal, a massive legislative effort to create clean energy jobs, modernize the electric grid, decarbonize the transportation sector, and transition to renewable energy sources, stems largely from dissatisfaction with the federal government’s response to the climate crisis, especially during the Trump era. In addition to his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and rollback of keystone protections for clean air and water, President Trump has spent an inordinate amount of time and money propping up shrinking fossil fuel industries at the expense of good-paying jobs in clean energy. He has been a singularly damaging figure, standing in the way of responsible environmental stewardship and improved public health.

But bad environmental policy did not start in 2016. Congress has long been an impediment to a proactive approach, and the Republican Party’s hostility to even the most marginal action to reduce emissions is both irresponsible and dangerous. However, the new Democratic House majority is in a strengthened position to stop the current backsliding on environmental protection and clean air regulation.

It is my hope that the recent dire reports of coming climate impact help galvanize the energy needed to achieve a sweeping, economy-wide policy solution: namely, pricing carbon.

Taking a free market approach to emissions reductions, and supplying regulatory certainty by putting a price on carbon pollution that reflects its social cost, is the most effective way to deal with greenhouse gasses across the economy. It lets firms find the emissions solutions right for them. Perhaps more importantly, a carbon price makes the costs of climate change more real and more relevant, which will undoubtedly inform consumer choice and inspire behavioral change from the world’s largest emitters. If consumers start making purchasing decisions based upon the global impacts of those purchases, we’ll see the economy reform much more quickly than through regulation.

Luckily, pricing carbon isn’t the only solution on the table.

As we continue to produce greenhouse gases at an unsustainable pace, the likelihood that we will need to rely on technology to help dig us out of this mess increases. Through its annual appropriations, Congress, frequently in a bipartisan fashion, has provided substantial funding for crucial R&D programs within the Department of Energy. These include the energy efficiency and renewable energy office and ARPA-E, the energy equivalent of the Pentagon’s advanced innovation incubator that spawned, among other things, the internet.

More focus on fostering innovation is needed, and the public sector is best positioned to make the investments necessary to get that done. With government support, private companies have led the way on innovations like direct air carbon capture, grid efficiency, and clean power generation to great effect. U.S. emissions have successfully decoupled from GDP growth, thanks in large part to a reduction in power consumption despite an increase in the number of users.

Perhaps more than any other potential innovation, improved energy storage can revolutionize our approach to climate change. Battery technology has only improved at the margins for nearly a generation, but significantly improved storage can open the door to massively scaling up of variable power generation sources like wind and solar, make electrification of the transportation sector more viable, and provide the energy reliability that proponents of fossil generation claim only resources like coal can provide.

One of our most important assets in the fight against climate change is our ability to attack the problem from multiple angles at once, and improved technology is an important piece of the puzzle.

It should be abundantly clear that we are well past the time for equivocation and inaction on climate change. 2018 was an abject failure in both policy to address the climate crisis and in real-world emissions reductions to combat it, both in the United States and globally. We cannot afford another year like that. Behavior change, perhaps spurred by a price on carbon, is the ultimate goal and the long-term solution, but technological advancements, funded by Congress and overseen by scientists and inventors in the federal government, can give us more time to take the steps needed to curb emissions in the direction of a low carbon, high-growth economy.