Public Policy Institute of California Poll on the Environment – July
2005:
Publication link at:
http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=623
From the Press Release:
Special Survey On The Environment: Whose World Is It Anyway?
Californians Say State Should Take Lead On Global Warming

Concern Over Air Pollution Trumps Economic, Financial Considerations
Little Support for Schwarzenegger, Bush on Environmental Issues

SAN FRANCISCO, California, July 21, 2005 – Driven by concerns about how
global warming will degrade their quality of life and by a profound lack
of confidence in the environmental and energy tilt of the federal
government, Californians want the state to act on its own to address the
problem, according to a new survey released today by the Public Policy
Institute of California (PPIC) with funding from the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation.

For most Californians, global warming is a real or looming phenomenon:
86 percent believe it will affect current or future generations, and 57
percent believe the effects are already being felt. Three in four (75%)
say the effects of global warming on the state’s economy and quality of
life will be very or somewhat serious. And large majorities of state
residents say they are at least somewhat concerned about the possible
impacts of global warming, including increased air pollution (86%), more
severe droughts (78%), greater coastal erosion (67%), and increased
flooding (60%).

Of those who believe global warming will affect current or future
generations, 62 percent identify human activities as the primary cause;
only 22 percent say naturally occurring increases in temperature are
responsible. So what do Californians want to do about it? A majority
(54%) express a preference for their state government to develop its own
policies, apart from the federal government, to address the issue of
global warming. Some current state efforts get broad public support:
77 percent favor the state law requiring automakers to further reduce
the emissions of greenhouse gases from new cars in California, beginning
in 2009. Support for this measure has remained steady since June 2002.

69 percent support the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets recently
established by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, which aim to reduce GHG
emissions from cars, power plants, and industry by more than 80 percent
over the next 50 years.
Why are Californians more inclined to see the state, rather than the
federal government, as a potential problem-solver? “It’s a question of
trust,” says PPIC statewide survey director Mark Baldassare.
“Californians do not have much faith in government in general, but when
it comes to environmental and energy issues, they clearly see the state
as more adequately representing their interests.”

Indeed, more residents trust the state government (52%) than the federal
government (43%) to provide correct information about the condition of
the environment – although both receive considerably less public trust
than do scientists and researchers at universities (78%) and
environmental organizations (64%). The state is also favored over the
federal government when it comes to protecting the quality of the
environment; however, only about one in three Californians trusts the
state government (37%) or the federal government (32%) to do what is
right just about always or most of the time.

Bush, Schwarzenegger Feel the Heat

On a range of environmental and energy issues, state residents are at
odds with the Bush administration and federal priorities. This
disconnect has done little to help performance ratings for President
George W. Bush: Overall, four in 10 California adults (38%) say they
approve of President Bush’s performance in office. Fewer state residents
approve of his handling of environmental (32%) and energy (29%) issues,
and majorities disapprove of his performance in both areas (54%
environment, 53% energy). The differences between the energy priorities
of the federal government (oil drilling and nuclear power) and those of
state residents (fuel efficiency) are illuminating:

A majority of state residents (56%) oppose new oil drilling in
federally-protected areas such as the Alaskan wilderness. On a related
note, Californians (53%) also remain opposed to allowing more oil
drilling off the California coast.

Most Californians (59%) oppose constructing new nuclear power plants in
order to expand U.S. energy sources. While 33 percent of Californians
support building more nuclear power plants, only 20 percent would still
support the plan if a plant were built within 50 miles of their home.
Similarly, although 48 percent of state residents favor the construction
of liquefied natural gas terminals, only 29 percent would still support
the plan if a facility were located within 50 miles of their home.
83 percent of Californians favor requiring automakers to significantly
improve the fuel efficiency of cars – and 73 percent support the policy
even if it increases the cost of buying a new car.

Unlike President Bush, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been quick to
show that he is close to the hearts and minds of Californians when it
comes to environmental and energy issues. A solid majority of residents
(55%) approve of his plan to encourage the development of hydrogen fuel
cell technology and most (76%) endorse his effort to provide incentives
for the use of solar energy in homes and businesses.

Have these efforts paid off for the governor? Overall, his approval
rating is at a low point (34%), down from 40 percent in May. And
Californians are divided when it comes to his handling of environmental
issues, with 32 percent of residents saying they approve and 35 percent
saying they disapprove. “Schwarzenegger’s problem is more global and has
little to do with his environmental record,” says Baldassare. In the
broader context, 51 percent of Californians say the state is headed in
the wrong direction and 54 percent oppose holding a special election in
November.
Lots of Interest, Less Involvement Among Blacks, Latinos
Most Californians (86%) – including strong majorities of whites,
Latinos, blacks, and Asians – say they are interested in news and
information about environmental issues. However, whites are more likely
to be personally involved in environmental organizations or related
activities than are other racial/ethnic groups, particularly Latinos and
blacks. For example, 14 percent of whites say they have volunteered
their time in the past year to work on an environmental issue, compared
to 8 percent of Latinos and blacks.
Media Gets Low Marks
When residents are asked to assess the trustworthiness of five entities
in providing correct information about the environment, scientists and
researchers at universities (78%) receive the most trust, while the news
media get the least (39%).

For the medium term future, at least, realistic proposals to mitigate greenhouse warming surely must involve nuclear power along with renewable energy technologies. With the Cold War behind us we could safely deploy new, improved nuclear designs on a large scale, without running an unacceptable risk of weapons proliferation or nasty accidents, if not for the fact that we sadly can’t trust the current leaders of the free world to get even little things right (things like chasing down and prosecuting those actually guilty of heinous crimes rather than settling for blowing up other people that we really don’t like, because we can, and lying about it before, during and after).

With decent leadership lots of wonderful things become conceivable; while waiting for that leadership to appear we can be addressing the less rational aspects of the by now widespread fear of nuclear power. Of course there are also good reasons to be very careful while increasing our reliance on nuclear power. The sooner we can put the irrational fears behind us – whether fears of a different, demonized, civilization that’s out to git us, or overblown fears of the perils of peaceable nuclear power generation – the better we can get to grips with the really big and serious issue of our times: the damage we’re doing to our own backyard.

http://lists.sierraclub.org/SCRIPTS/WA.EXE?A2=ind0011&L=ce-scnews-releases&P=R664&D=1&H=1&O=D&T=0

Others have come to similar conclusions about the role of the environmental commuinity in the global warming debate. See for example the widely-circulated “Death of Environmentalism” essay:

http://www.thebreakthrough.org/images/Death_of_Environmentalism.pdf

But I hope that you are right, because it suggests that there is still an opportunity for positions to evolve in ways amenable to policy action and away from the pathologies we described in our 2000 paper.

Actually, the problem of getting to a “zero emissions economy” in “a generation” is much more difficult than Lamar Alexander’s figures indicate.

Lamar Alexander’s figures refer to to *electrical power* only, i.e., nuclear produces approximately 20 percent of the U.S.’s *electrical* power. So that doesn’t include transportation energy usage (gasoline and diesel fuel) or natural gas used for residential and commercial heating, or oil and coal used for industrial processes.

In terms of total energy (not just energy for electrical power), nuclear contributes only 8-10 percent of the U.S. consumption/production:

http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/energy/stats_ctry/Stat1.html

It’s really surprising that anyone who wants to have any credibility as an analyst of the situation would say that the U.S. should aim for a “zero-carbon-emission society within a generation.” It’s completely unrealistic.

And if my analyses are essentially correct (and I pretty sure they are, because environmental analyses are what I do for a living) going to “zero-carbon-emission society within a generation” would have virtually NO effect on global temperatures, as compared to the “business as usual” case of worldwide carbon emissions rising to 1.5 times the 1990 values in 2030, and declining to 0.7 times the 1990 value in 2100).

By my calculations, if the *world* went to a “zero-carbon-emission society within a generation,” the warming by 2100 would be about 0.9 degrees Celsius, versus 1.2 degrees Celsius for “business as usual.” (“Business as usual” as I’VE correctly assessed it, and summarized above; not the “business as usual” nonsense in the IPCC Third Assessment Report.)

http://www.medillnewsdc.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=22&t=000365

Here is an excerpt:

“Sir John Houghton, lead scientist of London’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a lightening rod for conservative ire, said that the U.S. should be a leader in the field and aim for a zero-carbon-emission society within a generation.

Several senators scoffed at this idea and demanded more information about how an end to carbon emissions could be achieved so quickly.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, pointedly asked the scientists whether nuclear energy should be part of the solution.

The scientists agreed that all options – including nuclear power – should be on the table, but that hydrogen, solar, biomass and other renewable energy should be part of any solution. Sir John said he was concerned about the proliferation of nuclear material associated with increased nuclear energy and referred to research that suggested that 25 percent of U.S. energy could come from renewable biomass energy by 2025.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., jumped on Sir John’s remarks, saying, “If you believe that, I don’t believe what you said earlier about global warming.”

Alexander said he didn’t see “any way in the world” to get a zero-emission society in one generation without using nuclear power, which he said accounts for 70 percent of non-emission power in the U.S. and 20 percent of total power.

He said that the pending energy bill was trying to address the problem with funding for nuclear power, natural gas and clean coal technology. He also said the scientific community would be more persuasive if it came out in support of a realistic strategy.

“When we say, ‘What do we do about it?’ you are all over the map,” Alexander said. “We are not going to put a few solar panels on and build a few windmills and solve the problem.””

Dear Roger,
If you “doubt that much action … will happen on mitigation until action on decarbonization is framed in terms of its short term costs and benefits” then I conclude that you may, sadly, have never lived the American dream yourself. Never sold a set of encyclopedia to anyone, for instance, because the short term cost was the crucial factor and nobody could convince the householder that the books were, most importantly, an investment in their and their children’s future?

The notion that in sales and marketing reality there’s a conceptual problem with selling things that will only affect the world of the customer years into the future is refuted by such everyday matters as: saving for our retirement; planting a tree for our newborn children; investing in almost anything, anywhere, that you care to nominate; or for that matter having our children at all. All of these things are costs for us today, which we happily bear for the sake of their fruits a long time in the future. Yet somehow an investment in environmental futures is different in kind to any of these other investments? I think not. We ought to be able to sell to our neighbors and friends the notion that they might plan for a retirement that not only will provide them income to live well enough upon, and no doubt occasionally travel too, but may also allow them to enjoy on their travels a world that still has coral reefs (which take hundreds of years at least to become beautiful for the tourists), has good snow skiing in accessible locations, has not flooded low lying Pacific islands and their inhabitants out of existence, is not afflicted by increasing numbers of severe storms (the shape of the statistical distribution of cyclone energies will not really change shape dramatically as the frequency of cyclones increase, will it?), heatwaves, and so on.

An historically rapid change in climate will guarantee us a world where mainly weeds and rugged survivors thrive in the place of the complex and beautiful things that fill presently stable ecological niches. Anyone willing to invest in their children and their own future will be willing to pay something today for the sake of the environment tomorrow so, I conclude, if on the whole we end up failing to sell that idea to them then we’ll reap in maybe 50 years time, maybe much less, something like poetic justice for a species that’s had its blinkers on and been in a mad rush to go … nowhere worth getting to.

I don’t agree that such a conclusion follows logically from what Mario Molina said. Dr. Molina wrote that a doubling of CO2 (from the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm) would result in a 4 degree Fahrenheit (2.2 degree Celsius) temperature rise.

So, in other words, it’s a concentration of 560 ppm (CO2 equivalent) that will produce the 4 degree Fahrenheit rise. We’re currently at about 380 ppm of CO2. (But throw in methane and CFCs, and most people put the CO2 equivalent level at about 450 ppm.)

So we’re anywhere from 180 ppm to 110 ppm below the value that will produce the increase of 4 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Molina. Since levels are increasing at about 1.7 ppm per year, it will take approximately 65 to 105 years to reach the magical 560 ppm CO2 value.

That’s where Molina’s advice comes in. He’s saying that we should make some serious changes to make sure we don’t hit that 560 ppm value.

“Vitter [LA] and Stevens [AK] attending is interesting”

I will probably write more on this at some point, but both AK senators have been making noises on climate change for a few years now, with Murkowski in the last Congress trying to get some money into the $300+B transportation bill for studying the effect of warming on AK’s transportation infrastructure (Inhofe tried to shoot her down, but the dems voted with her; this was during an EPW committee markup). When the chairmanship of CST changed from McCain to Stevens this year some wondered if the frequency of climate change hearings would drop off, but so far Stevens has shown that he’ll continue to engage the issue. And how can the AK Senators not? There is no other place in the US seeing such obvious change.