What pollsters can learn from climate modelers

Pollster.com has an interesting piece on the confusing disparity among all of the polls taken for this election. In particular,...

Regulation and public investment are more efficient means to reduce GHGs than emissions pricing

When I sat down to write about why so-called "command and control" methods are often the most effective and efficient means of fighting climate chaos, I found that Kevin Drum had posted exactly the argument I wanted to refute.

After conceding that it will take more than emissions pricing to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and that response to price signals tends to be small and slow, Drum argues that a price mechanism should be the primary means to fight climate chaos: "Still, generally speaking, taxes and carbon trading are more efficient regulatory mechanisms than command and control, so the more you can rely on them the better."

I think this default conventional wisdom is just plain wrong. Not only is elasticity low, but there are also simple standards by which we can measure energy and greenhouse-gas efficiency. Further, suitable means for increasing efficiency and lowering emissions are known. Given these three conditions, price is not the most efficient way to change behavior.

As examples, consider weather and duct sealing. It's widely acknowledged that sealing buildings yields fast paybacks -- two years or less. Yet most buildings remain under-sealed, with leaky frames and ducts. How do we change this? Well, we can raise the price of energy until people become desperate and seek out contractors. But since we already have quick paybacks, any amount we raise the price is far beyond the cost of saving the energy.

If, as I have suggested in surveys of the literature, demand response to price increases is around -.5, that means it will require $200 in emissions charges to motivate each $100 of consumer investment in energy efficiency. In contrast, investing public funds could insure that a nice woman working for an energy-efficiency utility could seal your home for around $100, plus a bit for administration. Even if that $100+ came from regressive taxation, it would still cost consumers less than a primarily price-driven policy. And if the payback is really two years or less, the government could use its ability to borrow to provide low interest financing, thus bringing the cost to consumers down below the business-as-usual price.

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A detailed look at building, industry, transportation, and land-use greenhouse-gas emissions

Greenhouse gases come in two basic flavors: carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, and emissions from land use -- agriculture, forests, peat bogs, and waste management. Fossil fuels are primarily used for energy in three sectors: buildings, industry, and transportation. Transportation is almost entirely oil-based -- according to the International Energy Association, about 0.1 percent of transportation energy currently comes from electricity.

Just to make things complicated, people use fossil fuels to make electricity to use in buildings and industry. Well, actually, we use fossil fuels to make electricity -- and -- we use fossil fuels to make heat to use in buildings and industry. In my previous post, I presented some pretty exciting tables summarizing this global state of affairs (and the accompanying Google workbook). Now, in part 2, a detailed look at building, industry, transportation, and land-use emissions:

Searching for the hope in Obama’s USDA pick

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Who’s to blame for the crisis in the auto industry?

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'Climate change' is climate change by any other name

In his famous essay, "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell wrote: "The English language ... becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." He warns that "Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." The importance of language and rhetoric is a subject near to my heart.

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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Washington, D.C., is to the English language what Paris is to fashion. Every season, perfectly good words go out of style and new ones are trotted out on the national runway of rhetoric. Some words are considered so worn out, politically incorrect, or laden with baggage that they can no longer be used in public discourse. When that happens, people like me find ourselves scrambling for suitable synonyms.

That was the case a few years ago with "sustainable development." I operated the Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development at the U.S. Department of Energy, helping communities understand and apply the practice. Before long, signals came down from Capitol Hill that the words "sustainable development" had become the kiss of death for any program that used them. The term "smart growth" was invented to take "sustainability's" place.

More recently, Congress has avoided using the word "climate" in legislation that clearly is meant in part to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions -- legislation such as the "Energy Security and Independence Act of 2007." The Bush people call torture "enhanced interrogation" and call kidnapping "rendition." Healthy Forests and Clear Skies became the titles of the Bush Administration's programs to cut trees and pollute the air, respectively.

Our elected leaders aren't alone in manipulating the English language. Lobbyists and extremists, left and right, regularly play the game too, to obscure facts, incite emotions, insult opponents, or get attention from the media, where conflict is red meat.

Coal executives try to persuade us there's such a thing as "clean coal" and oil executives talk about "energy independence" when they really mean more drilling. In 2003, Orwell protégé Frank Luntz counseled in a confidential memo that the Administration and conservatives should stop using the term "global warming" because it was too frightening. Luntz suggested that Republicans refer to themselves as "conservationists" rather than "environmentalists," since the latter term, in Luntz's view, is associated with tree-hugging and extremism.