The Path of a Radical Idea

Looks like it was a pretty diverse audience – ranging from pale white to just plain white.

HA. That looks like Seattle. Except for 98118 I hear but we keep those people nice and cloistered.

I hear your half-joke and I get it, but I'm not letting the climate change crowd off that easily by saying “That looks like Seattle.” I'm looking around this cafe that I'm sitting in (in ZIP other than 98118, by the way), and the crowd here doesn't look anything like the one in that room. Ditto with what I see out of the window on the sidewalk.

No, the sustainability crowd in Seattle is a special kind of super-white post-materialist.

That fact does nothing to change the validity and urgency of their objectives; it just means that until they figure out how to talk to people outside of their comfort zone, they'll continue to measure success with “meetings” and hollow victories.

Love carbon neutrality, hate cap and trade as a mechanism though. Has any mechanism been discussed that would not necessitate the use of carbon offsets via a trading “market” (ie something Goldman Sachs will be rigging and taking a slice of?)

A very simple mechanism that isn't Cap and Trade is a carbon tax. There are advantages and disadvantages of a tax vs. Cap and Trade. Biggest advantage: it's simple and predictable for companies.
Biggest disadvantage: it's called a Tax
Second disadvantage: it doesn't guarantee the amount of emission reduction to be sufficient if you set the tax to low (or flip the argument if the tax is too high).

Another mechanism is more command and control. For instance:
1) No more coal plants;
2) All coal power plants that don't meet current emission standards (grandfathered in from before the clean air act) shut down by 2015
3) All coal plant shut down by 2030.
4) Federal renewable energy standard
5) Build a HVDC grid to get wind power to Miami and Solar power to New York
6) Greatly increase CAFE standards
7) Insert your favorite policy here

Dan, imo you're jumping the gun a bit on 'details on concrete policy and actions'. Not that we shouldn't be thinking of those things, but this wasn't the forum. Your larger point is an important one; Seattle traditionally takes forever making decisions, and we don't have forever. Moving on this fast enough is going to be one the city's greatest barriers.

And @hobgoblin – you're point is completely right and well taken; but either you're being deliberately insulting or you really think that somehow you're aware of this issue, but the people thinking about neutrality aren't. Either way, you might want to actually talk to some of these people – you would find that they're actively working to broaden the conversation, with a genuine interest in a better Seattle for everyone.

Thanks for the good questions, Dan.

I particularly like this suggestion: “If the the council truly is united in taking carbon neutrality seriously, each council member should commit to championing and making progress on a specific policy that will have a significant and measurable impact on lowering Seattle’s carbon emissions.”

Perhaps the City could come up with a local city-wide version of the stabilization wedges approach:

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003861.html

Dividing the problem into do-able major wins (reduce VMT, raise green building standards, increase compactness of development, expand transit, pursue low-carbon industrial strategies, etc.) which could each have a champion on the Council — that might be a real accelerator of progress.

In fairness, this is not trivial or easy. The City needs truly major shifts in priorities around transportation, planning, etc. The acid test for climate efforts in Seattle, I suspect will be: is the Council brave enough to take on auto-dependence? The seriousness with which they're engaging on this gives me some real faith that a big change is possible.

In the interest of accuracy, as well, it's important to note that carbon neutrality by 2030 would make us the most ambitious city in North America, but not in the world. Copenhagen is on track to do it by 2025, and a handful of other European cities are looking at 2030.

Leading the nation is hardly slacking, though!

No to hijack the thread, but I just wanted to make a point about the discussion above regarding a carbon tax vs. cap and trade: there's really no reason that a carbon tax would be simpler, easier, or any less susceptible to loopholes or being rigged by industry than cap-and-trade would be. Just look at how taxes work in the US- our corporate tax rate is high compared to many countries, but the actual amount the corporations end up paying out after loopholes is pretty puny. Any new tax is going to be sent through the ringer of our complex tax code- it's only simple as an idea on paper.

Both a carbon tax and cap-and-trade are desirable policies that would do a lot of good. They largely accomplish the same thing (putting a price on carbon), just using different methods- but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that a tax would be resistant to industry lobbying while cap-and-trade is a boondoggle waiting to happen. Both methods have to be implemented soundly to work, and both will be targeted by industry groups seeking to gain any advantage they can.

Sorry, I meant for that to be a reply in the relevant thread above. My bad.

Shutting down coal plants will lead to shutting down coal mines. In which case, what family wage jobs would be available to coal miners in Virginia and elsewhere in the country?

I don't worry about the jobs of photographers when we try to stop kiddie porn. We don't argue against peace because soldiers will lose their jobs. Nor should we regret the loss of jobs of coal miners when we move beyond coal. If the job you're doing is a negative to society, we should rejoice when those jobs disappear.

Or to put it in a less combative mode, they can get jobs building wind turbines or solar panels. Renewable energy creates more jobs per $ and per kWh than coal power does.

Yes, a carbon tax can be made arbitrarily complicated, but it's possible to make it simple: X $ per ton of CO2 for everyone, as high up as possible on the value chain (e.g. fuel is paid at the refinery or the oil well/port, not the gas pump). There will probably be some reasonable exceptions (methane emissions from small farms) and some not so reasonable exceptions (methane emissions from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), but it can be fairly simple. The hard part is choosing the value of X and how fast to increase it over time.

Cap and Trade is inherently complicated. You have to make all the same choices as the carbon tax (who it applies to, how many permits will be granted and how fast you decrease the number over time), plus you have to determine how you distribute the free emission permits and build a trading system that determines the price. If you auction off all of the permits, then it begins to look very much like a carbon tax in terms of simplicity, but there's no real “trade”. That's more of a Cap and Auction system, which I very much like.

People can't just change from coal-mining to building wind turbines. We can't just snap our fingers and suddenly have a trained workforce. It just doesn't work like that.

Are you suggesting it is better to obliterate our working class, by eliminating their family wage “dirty” jobs, for the greater good of society and the planet. Seems like a rather elitist perspective.

And comparing coal miners to people who photograph kiddie porn…really?

I also compared coal minors to soldiers. The point is, just because it's a job doesn't mean it's a good thing. How about tobacco farmers and oncologists? Should we stop discouraging smoking because they'll have less work?

I would say worrying about coal miners in the USA and not farmers in Bangladesh is much more elitist than anything that I'm proposing.

If you read my post, you'd see that I suggested moving away from coal over a period of 20 years. That's time for many of the miners to retire and for the younger ones to get jobs where they're less likely to die on the job. The new, green economy has plenty of opportunity for blue-collar jobs.

what time of day did this meeting happen? That might be a reason why demographics are so low.

My guess is that out reach is pretty much non-existent in more diverse communities in regards to climate change (it may even not exist in less diverse neighborhoods too). I'm not sure why it is, but it should be a concern to all people interest in climate change. The longer it takes to reach out the more it looks like an non-inclusive issue and likely will add to the wedge between white people and non-whites.

You raise a valid criticism but I think it cuts much deeper than “sustainability”. Seattle has an intensely segregated legacy that shapes every aspect of public life.

I agree that pulling off the rational, ethical city contemplated by the Neutral Carbon crowd will demand broad new social engagement and empathy (along with a rational overhaul of regional governance).

But what's wrong with that?

Yes, and world peace will put a lot of soldiers out of work too. Your point is?

I'd like to see some intelligent work put into scoping out the implementation of a 50% – 100% gas tax in, at the least, Snohomish, King, and Pierce counties.

My back of the envelope calculation suggests that would raise $2B – $5B in new revenues annually. (Current tax of $.37/gal generates about $1B/yr statewide. Take that tax up to $1.50 – $3.00, figure those counties have 2/3 or so of the state population. Of course, the tax will reduce consumption quite bit, so the math is a bit squishy.)

I'm thinking roughly one third of the revenue would go to socially productive purposes including reimbursing low-income folks who will be stuck driving for a while until the region is better designed; one third to support childcare, school, senior and family health centers situated close to workplaces (the main obstacle most families have to giving up their cars); and one third for improved transit, walkability initiatives, etc.

Might be a good campaign issue for 2012, with a phase-in from 2014 to 2019.