I find myself like Jesse with MY - "98% agreeing!"
I tend to disagree on your categorization that a price on carbon is (primarily) supply side rather than demand side. other than changing the input costs to fossil fuel supply (steel, cement, on and on) most of the effect - and, as far as I understand, assumed so by economics - is on the demand side and switching at the margin there (which does have knock-on effects on investment decisions for supply).
that still leaves the political economy of carbon pricing as an open question - as you do a good job of highlighting!
positioning it as a backstop may be a best-possible approach at some point... the case remains that it is still likely the most "efficient" mitigation tool in the theoretical toolkit. whether we ever reach for it, who knows? need to press on the levers that are working now, unless and until that day comes.🤷
I agree that carbon taxes are a bit ambiguous here in terms of classification. I was broadly going by where costs land: directly on the consumers or on the government via spending. The latter is more politically palatable even if it might be less efficient.
How about adding a military cost surcharge to every gallon of gas (e.g., the US spending $80B/year to guard the shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz, the trillions for the Iraq war debacle, etc.)? We've been subsidizing fossil fuels for way too long, putting the cost on our federal credit card for future generations to pay.
Great piece ZH. I especially like that you address the potential harms of unachievable targetism in the 1.5C trap section.
Just a note that Canada still has carbon pricing and perhaps our re-emphasis on the industrial side will be a model for others (analyses have shown that it resulted in much more decarbonization than the consumer-facing fuel charge).
"most of the general public in the US does not prioritize climate change above economic issues"
And of course this is always the case. Priorities depend on time scales, and it is the long time scales, beyond that of those living, but pertinent to the future generations, that matter wrt climate change. Until or unless politicians recognize this and build for a longer term future, it seems likely that the kinds of things in this article will always be secondary.
The role of politicians, even if many do not recognize it, is to weigh all factors and time scales. Most are focussed on the next 2 or 6 years: the election cycle. So there is good reason to be skeptical of progress unless the climate issues can be framed in economic or health reasons. A carbon tax that is appropriately framed, not solely based on climate change, seems more likely to survive long enough to make a difference. [Although the current administration makes even that unlikely]. Certainly removing subsidies for fossil fuel, including opening up new areas, and using the defence budget to appropriate new lands in places like Venezuela, so that the real cost of fossil fuels is never even seen by the public, seems essential.
Only a carbon tax fully meets the economics of addressing climate change. I would like to see how it could be made more palatable to the public by creative offsets in other trade, income and excise taxes. Not enough creativity has gone into making a carbon tax attractive....
We've been trying to make it palatable for three decades now. To date we've successfully passed a lot of subsidy policies for clean energy at the federal level but no taxes (and not much in the way of cap and trade systems outside SO2).
Couldn't a revenue-neutral tax and dividend scheme be politically palatable? If done right, it can be a net positive for the finances of working people (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S092180091831084X). "Polluters pay, you get an energy cashback" seems like it could actually be really good politics.
I'd argue that the rapid encheapening* of renewable energy globally has more economic influence because it bypasses political hurdles. Who except the fossil fuel companies doesn't like cheap?
(Sadly, though, in the US the labor cost for installing heat pumps has gone way up.)
While a carbon price is not likely from the current administration, it would be wise to accept the IPCC's warning that without a strong, economy-wide, global carbon price we will fail to achieve our science-based climate goals (carboncashback.org/carbon-cash-back).
The question is how to do it. The policy that benefits families and businesses, supports the highest price, holds other countries accountable for their pollution, and costs the least to administer is a good place to start. We should have that discussion now, so that the next time Congress has an opportunity to pass climate legislation, it has strong public support to pass the most effective policy possible.
A steadily rising cash-back carbon fee on fossil fuel production and a CBAM is the experts' gold standard: carboncashback.org/carbon-cash-back
Lets be a bit careful what statements we attribute to the IPCC here! There is a lot to like conceptually about a carbon price (particularly a revenue neutral one), though a technologically neutral clean energy subsidy is conceptually similar (albeit less economically efficient). But at least to-date the politics of a federal carbon price have been a non-starter in the US.
Clean energy subsidies do not disincentivize the use of fossil fuels and do lower fossil fuel prices due to reduced demand, but lower prices support increased use. Also, clean energy subsidies do nothing to motivate energy efficiency. Efficiency can be subsidized too (and in many cases should be - e.g., home energy audits and efficiency work for low- and middle-income households), but how much money does the US want to spend on these things if the market can drive them through a price signal and not cost taxpayers anything? A price on pollution provides direct motivation to seek energy efficiency, as well as driving the transition to clean energy production. The cash-back rebate to people puts most people financially ahead, net, compared with where they are now: carboncashback.org/benefits. The CBAM makes US businesses more competitive in the US market against dirtier-polluting countries, and holds other countries accountable for their pollution: carboncashback.org/carbon-price-gap
Check out MIT's En-ROADS global climate policy simulator to compare the climate-solution power of subsidies with carbon pricing. I've created a three-scenario poster to show that a strong US carbon price, made possible (and popular, so more viable and durable) with a cash-back dividend to all households, and pushed around the world by enabling the US to join the EU and others in a CBAM-protected carbon club, makes CF&D "half the 1.5˚C solution" at bit.ly/cfdresources.
It's supply vs demand. Ideally, cut the supply and the prices go up and renewables take over. But, look at all those petro states wanting quick bucks. Also, you can cut demand by inflating the price via tax. More cumbersome but more likely to succeed.
Zeke argues pursuasively that just cutting off fossil fuel supply has been demonstrated in Europe to result in energy price spikes, unhappy voters, and foster a public right-wing anti-climate (pro-fossil fuel) backlash.
But by not accepting the necessity (according to the IPCC) of a carbon price for any chance at a relatively safe climate future, those who promote merely making it cheaper to deploy clean energy are also helping promote the fossil fuel industry's profit over all objective. Subsidizing clean energy reduces energy prices but lower prices leads to increased consumption, somewhat negating the benefits of clean energy government spending (Jevons Paradox).
Please check out the En-ROADS poster at bit.ly/cfdresources to see the enormous climate impact a strong US carbon price (made viable and durable with a cash-back dividend and pushed worldwide with a CBAM) can make. Click on the links to load the En-ROADS scenarios (on a computer) and explore our policy options yourself.
CCL has a valid fee/dividend solution. But, government doesn't look for solutions to non-problems. Re-election and campaign money are problems ( to them). Just think how great America could really be if Congress and the king understood true problems. I wish we had what CCL proposes but can never picture congress enacting it ( until we are at 3C ).
CCL volunteers work to create the political will needed for Congress to pass effective and fair climate solutions. While it may seem a strong carbon price is not possible in the US, that is impossible to know. See the history of the Carbon Fee and Dividend bill (EICDA) at bit.ly/cfdresources - there were 96 cosponsors two sessions ago. In 2022 Senator Whitehouse said the Dems had 49 of the necessary 50 Senators needed to price carbon with cash-back for some in the IRA.
While it seems we have even bigger problems right now, I believe we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and we can connect the problems and demand solutions.
Did you ever notice we all post the same climate concerns year after year with little headway or blatant backward steps? I feel like a climate dog chasing its tail. I know.. keep the faith they say.. as Earth 🔥
Yes, keep the faith, keep learning, and keep trying. It will be too late for a relatively safe climate future, but the US will eventually be arm-twisted by the rising carbon prices and CBAMs of our major trading partners to price carbon here.
That being said, I counter Al Gore's moral hazard attribution to srm to the real moral hazard is delusional wishful thinking the government is duly combating climate change or will.
There's a lot to think about here. It's useful to reinforce the point that 1.5C global warming has no physical significance *in and of itself.* That is to say, the sole focus on the 1.5C warming threshold can be taken as "all's peachy-keen in the climate system at 1.49C of warming, and everything falls apart at 1.51C warming." (If we could measure the earth system with 0.01C precision). And the idea that every 0.1 degree "matters" can also be taken in a way that could be misleading in that same way: does model-based detection & attribution work to 0.1 degree precision (whether in the IPCC D&A frame or in the 'event attribution frame)? Rather what I think Zeke is trying to get across (correct me if I've got that wrong) is the idea of physical climate risk on a continuum. The risks and many impacts scale with warming. More warming, more risk. In that "continuum" framing any given warming level is more of a "milestone" than a physically-significant threshold.
With the benefit of hindsight, if I could have changed one aspect of Canada's carbon tax, it would have been this: if there was a year where inflation exceeded 3%, then the carbon tax wouldn't have gone up in the following year. The carbon tax always had its opponents, but they gained traction when inflation totaled 13% over a three year period. The carbon tax did not have a significant impact on inflation, but raising it during periods of high inflation made it a convenient scapegoat.
Here in British Columbia, we are without a carbon tax for the first time in eighteen years, so the public is willing to tolerate one under the right circumstances. I agree that carbon taxes are not the ideal policy to focus on right now, but I suspect that they will become increasingly palatable once clean technologies become more widespread.
In a roundabout way, this brings up "rationing carbon". Just plain ole degrowth which king Don is enforcing on his 51st ( in his mindless mind ) state by tariffing it harshly.
Thx for the calculations of the effect of NG in relation to coal use, taking methane leakage into account.
The affordability argument has the poorer strata of society at its center, if I am not wrong. That's why effectively pricing emissions - be it by taxes or by emission cap - has to use social compensation measures, like giving a part of the money or all back to the consumers, while giving the poor more. If this is done, the affordability issue vanishes, more or less, when you omit the whining rich. (If you *can* do this, is another matter, o.c.)
The problem here being, as so often, to suppose that one word, like "affordability", does say it all, while it doesn't.
I advocate the ‘all of the above’ approach. I personally am all for the European cap&trade systems, as flawed as they still may be, perticularly with respect to social compensation. Use the part of the emission-pricing revenue you did not pay back to the poor to finance decarbonization R&D and intelligent subsidies.
Excellent framework for thinking through climate policy pragmatism. The 20 year vs 100 year methane timeframe debate is particualrly critical becuase it forces us to confront intergenerational tradeoffs explicitly. I've seen utilities use the shorter window to justify rushing gas infrastucture, but the discounting argument feels way more honest than pretending climate tipping points operate on such tight cycles.
Solid anlysis here on why subsidizing clean alternatives might just be politically smarter than penalizing fossil fuels. The gas-as-bridge argument always got pushback from some folks I worked with at energy conferences, but the data on coal displacement is kinda hard to ignore. I dunno if backstopping prices with a carbon tax would actually work though, since the political viability window for taxes seems narrow even when framed as a price floor.
Note that we also know more about the *health effects* of having natgas piped into our homes and schools to be combusted for cooking and heating. Old stoves, water heaters and furnaces produce incomplete combustion products like CO, SOx, NOx and aldehydes. Get this into the discussion of the "new mom" forums (or Marge Simpson's copy of *Fretful Mother Magazine*), and we can get their support for getting rid of combustion appliances.
Hi Zeke, I'm afraid all this is really moot as it appears that Trump is going to decimate all govt. funded climate science in the near future. He has 3 more years of this and I quite frankly think that 3 years from now the field of climate science will be pretty much a thing of the past. I could be wrong of course...
You already are. To wit: the USA is just one country. Trump isn't King of the World, despite his grandiose delusions. China and the EU are decarbonizing on the strength of international climate science. Africans are building their national economies de novo with distributed solar power - no decarbonization necessary. We're free-riding on the rest of the world's collective actions. Worse: now we're flagrantly seizing small countries for their oil. You must be so proud!
Well done Zeke. Rather than following the cliche of "stop all fossil fuels", you have analysed the issue using real data.
Every time I see these high quality assessments, I agree we need action, but I'm reminded of the old Irish joke (modified here); "If you want to build a high efficiency power grid, I wouldn't start from here", because we have almost destroyed our grid in Australia by rushing into closing coal power stations without finding a way for renewables to replace that base load power. As a result, coal power stations have stopped closing-down and are being ordered to stay open decades longer, at least until 2049, and probably for the rest of this century, unless we build some nuclear power stations (again, don't panic). After spending $500 billion of borrowed money on renewable grids, that will impoverish the next 3 generations, our emissions are not falling much and our grid is at risk of complete failure. Many renewable projects are now way past their use-by date and many contribute nothing to the major cities, but we keep paying-out subsidies for these failed projects. Repairing our grid will keep the nation deeper in dept than we were during WW2 when our survival was at stake.
Often in engineering, we need to act more methodically and not adopt panic solutions that make things far worse. Now, the patching technology for renewable grids has a 10-year wait list and costs have trebled due to panic demand for massive grid stabilizers and complicated switching gear. My idea - sequentially replace coal with nuclear. Gas and batteries is far too expensive.
It's not the most important question, but I'd love to see you, or someone else I trust, directly address and sort out the claims Yglesias and Casten and others have made about (1) the relative climate impact of different oil sources; and (2) the relative climate impact of coal burning on other continents vs. LNG shipped from the US. Here, unless I've missed something, you've discussed gas vs. coal only in the context of domestic consumption. And regarding oil, I guess I find it hard to believe that the differences between different sources are significant compared to the emissions from burning oil, regardless of the source--but I'm ready to be reeducated if necessary.
The climate impacts of exported LNG are complicated. On a GWP100 basis LNG is still generally better than coal, but low-cost LNG could also displace clean energy sources. On balance it might be a bit of a wash from a climate standpoint...
How dare you find a middle ground...
For my money, Zeke's one of the straightest shooting climate scientists around!
great contribution, Zeke!
I find myself like Jesse with MY - "98% agreeing!"
I tend to disagree on your categorization that a price on carbon is (primarily) supply side rather than demand side. other than changing the input costs to fossil fuel supply (steel, cement, on and on) most of the effect - and, as far as I understand, assumed so by economics - is on the demand side and switching at the margin there (which does have knock-on effects on investment decisions for supply).
that still leaves the political economy of carbon pricing as an open question - as you do a good job of highlighting!
positioning it as a backstop may be a best-possible approach at some point... the case remains that it is still likely the most "efficient" mitigation tool in the theoretical toolkit. whether we ever reach for it, who knows? need to press on the levers that are working now, unless and until that day comes.🤷
I agree that carbon taxes are a bit ambiguous here in terms of classification. I was broadly going by where costs land: directly on the consumers or on the government via spending. The latter is more politically palatable even if it might be less efficient.
We place inverse taxes on the supply side. Called "subsiDIEs".
How about adding a military cost surcharge to every gallon of gas (e.g., the US spending $80B/year to guard the shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz, the trillions for the Iraq war debacle, etc.)? We've been subsidizing fossil fuels for way too long, putting the cost on our federal credit card for future generations to pay.
Great piece ZH. I especially like that you address the potential harms of unachievable targetism in the 1.5C trap section.
Just a note that Canada still has carbon pricing and perhaps our re-emphasis on the industrial side will be a model for others (analyses have shown that it resulted in much more decarbonization than the consumer-facing fuel charge).
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/12/31/analysis/new-era-industrial-carbon-pricing-works
https://salatainstitute.harvard.edu/building-a-climate-coalition-gcpp-flagship-report/
"most of the general public in the US does not prioritize climate change above economic issues"
And of course this is always the case. Priorities depend on time scales, and it is the long time scales, beyond that of those living, but pertinent to the future generations, that matter wrt climate change. Until or unless politicians recognize this and build for a longer term future, it seems likely that the kinds of things in this article will always be secondary.
The role of politicians, even if many do not recognize it, is to weigh all factors and time scales. Most are focussed on the next 2 or 6 years: the election cycle. So there is good reason to be skeptical of progress unless the climate issues can be framed in economic or health reasons. A carbon tax that is appropriately framed, not solely based on climate change, seems more likely to survive long enough to make a difference. [Although the current administration makes even that unlikely]. Certainly removing subsidies for fossil fuel, including opening up new areas, and using the defence budget to appropriate new lands in places like Venezuela, so that the real cost of fossil fuels is never even seen by the public, seems essential.
Kevin Trenberth
Only a carbon tax fully meets the economics of addressing climate change. I would like to see how it could be made more palatable to the public by creative offsets in other trade, income and excise taxes. Not enough creativity has gone into making a carbon tax attractive....
We've been trying to make it palatable for three decades now. To date we've successfully passed a lot of subsidy policies for clean energy at the federal level but no taxes (and not much in the way of cap and trade systems outside SO2).
Couldn't a revenue-neutral tax and dividend scheme be politically palatable? If done right, it can be a net positive for the finances of working people (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S092180091831084X). "Polluters pay, you get an energy cashback" seems like it could actually be really good politics.
I'd argue that the rapid encheapening* of renewable energy globally has more economic influence because it bypasses political hurdles. Who except the fossil fuel companies doesn't like cheap?
(Sadly, though, in the US the labor cost for installing heat pumps has gone way up.)
_____________
*It's a perfectly cromulent word.
While a carbon price is not likely from the current administration, it would be wise to accept the IPCC's warning that without a strong, economy-wide, global carbon price we will fail to achieve our science-based climate goals (carboncashback.org/carbon-cash-back).
The question is how to do it. The policy that benefits families and businesses, supports the highest price, holds other countries accountable for their pollution, and costs the least to administer is a good place to start. We should have that discussion now, so that the next time Congress has an opportunity to pass climate legislation, it has strong public support to pass the most effective policy possible.
A steadily rising cash-back carbon fee on fossil fuel production and a CBAM is the experts' gold standard: carboncashback.org/carbon-cash-back
There are also immediate economic benefits of this approach that should be considered: carboncashback.org/carbon-price-gap
Lets be a bit careful what statements we attribute to the IPCC here! There is a lot to like conceptually about a carbon price (particularly a revenue neutral one), though a technologically neutral clean energy subsidy is conceptually similar (albeit less economically efficient). But at least to-date the politics of a federal carbon price have been a non-starter in the US.
Hi Zeke, these quotes from the IPCC are on my carboncashback.org/carbon-cash-back page referenced above:
"Explicit carbon prices remain a necessary condition of ambitious climate policies” - IPCC SR15 chapter 4.4.5.2 - https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-4/#:~:text=Explicit%20carbon%20prices%20remain%20a%20necessary%20condition%20of%20ambitious%20climate%20policies
"Carbon pricing is most effective [and popular] if revenues are... returned to taxpayers corresponding to widely accepted notions of fairness" - IPCC AR6 WG3 TS PDF page 81 - https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_TechnicalSummary.pdf
"estimates for a Below-1.5°C pathway range from 135–6050 USD2010 tCO2-eq −1 in 2030, 245–14300 USD2010 tCO2-eq−1 in 2050, 420–19300 USD2010 tCO2-eq −1 in 2070 and 690–30100 USD2010 tCO2-eq −1 in 2100." - SR15 2.5.2.1 Price of carbon emissions - https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-2/#:~:text=estimates%20for%20a%20Below%2D1.5%C2%B0C%20pathway%20range%20from%20135%E2%80%936050%20USD2010%20tCO2%2Deq%20%E2%88%921%20in%202030
And there's also the largest public statement by US economists about anything ever: clcouncil.org/economists-statement
Clean energy subsidies do not disincentivize the use of fossil fuels and do lower fossil fuel prices due to reduced demand, but lower prices support increased use. Also, clean energy subsidies do nothing to motivate energy efficiency. Efficiency can be subsidized too (and in many cases should be - e.g., home energy audits and efficiency work for low- and middle-income households), but how much money does the US want to spend on these things if the market can drive them through a price signal and not cost taxpayers anything? A price on pollution provides direct motivation to seek energy efficiency, as well as driving the transition to clean energy production. The cash-back rebate to people puts most people financially ahead, net, compared with where they are now: carboncashback.org/benefits. The CBAM makes US businesses more competitive in the US market against dirtier-polluting countries, and holds other countries accountable for their pollution: carboncashback.org/carbon-price-gap
Check out MIT's En-ROADS global climate policy simulator to compare the climate-solution power of subsidies with carbon pricing. I've created a three-scenario poster to show that a strong US carbon price, made possible (and popular, so more viable and durable) with a cash-back dividend to all households, and pushed around the world by enabling the US to join the EU and others in a CBAM-protected carbon club, makes CF&D "half the 1.5˚C solution" at bit.ly/cfdresources.
It's supply vs demand. Ideally, cut the supply and the prices go up and renewables take over. But, look at all those petro states wanting quick bucks. Also, you can cut demand by inflating the price via tax. More cumbersome but more likely to succeed.
If only they turned off the fossil spicket..
Zeke argues pursuasively that just cutting off fossil fuel supply has been demonstrated in Europe to result in energy price spikes, unhappy voters, and foster a public right-wing anti-climate (pro-fossil fuel) backlash.
But by not accepting the necessity (according to the IPCC) of a carbon price for any chance at a relatively safe climate future, those who promote merely making it cheaper to deploy clean energy are also helping promote the fossil fuel industry's profit over all objective. Subsidizing clean energy reduces energy prices but lower prices leads to increased consumption, somewhat negating the benefits of clean energy government spending (Jevons Paradox).
Please check out the En-ROADS poster at bit.ly/cfdresources to see the enormous climate impact a strong US carbon price (made viable and durable with a cash-back dividend and pushed worldwide with a CBAM) can make. Click on the links to load the En-ROADS scenarios (on a computer) and explore our policy options yourself.
CCL has a valid fee/dividend solution. But, government doesn't look for solutions to non-problems. Re-election and campaign money are problems ( to them). Just think how great America could really be if Congress and the king understood true problems. I wish we had what CCL proposes but can never picture congress enacting it ( until we are at 3C ).
CCL volunteers work to create the political will needed for Congress to pass effective and fair climate solutions. While it may seem a strong carbon price is not possible in the US, that is impossible to know. See the history of the Carbon Fee and Dividend bill (EICDA) at bit.ly/cfdresources - there were 96 cosponsors two sessions ago. In 2022 Senator Whitehouse said the Dems had 49 of the necessary 50 Senators needed to price carbon with cash-back for some in the IRA.
While it seems we have even bigger problems right now, I believe we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and we can connect the problems and demand solutions.
See slides 47-51 and the notes under slide #51 here for one way to do that: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1QdJjAgXTo95R5hb0K8sqs92tY_N1jNoBDnCWRJa-bBk/edit?usp=drivesdk&slide=id.g38ccdf67cb4_0_947#slide=id.g38ccdf67cb4_0_947
Did you ever notice we all post the same climate concerns year after year with little headway or blatant backward steps? I feel like a climate dog chasing its tail. I know.. keep the faith they say.. as Earth 🔥
Yes, keep the faith, keep learning, and keep trying. It will be too late for a relatively safe climate future, but the US will eventually be arm-twisted by the rising carbon prices and CBAMs of our major trading partners to price carbon here.
carboncashback.org/carbon-price-gap
That being said, I counter Al Gore's moral hazard attribution to srm to the real moral hazard is delusional wishful thinking the government is duly combating climate change or will.
There's a lot to think about here. It's useful to reinforce the point that 1.5C global warming has no physical significance *in and of itself.* That is to say, the sole focus on the 1.5C warming threshold can be taken as "all's peachy-keen in the climate system at 1.49C of warming, and everything falls apart at 1.51C warming." (If we could measure the earth system with 0.01C precision). And the idea that every 0.1 degree "matters" can also be taken in a way that could be misleading in that same way: does model-based detection & attribution work to 0.1 degree precision (whether in the IPCC D&A frame or in the 'event attribution frame)? Rather what I think Zeke is trying to get across (correct me if I've got that wrong) is the idea of physical climate risk on a continuum. The risks and many impacts scale with warming. More warming, more risk. In that "continuum" framing any given warming level is more of a "milestone" than a physically-significant threshold.
With the benefit of hindsight, if I could have changed one aspect of Canada's carbon tax, it would have been this: if there was a year where inflation exceeded 3%, then the carbon tax wouldn't have gone up in the following year. The carbon tax always had its opponents, but they gained traction when inflation totaled 13% over a three year period. The carbon tax did not have a significant impact on inflation, but raising it during periods of high inflation made it a convenient scapegoat.
Here in British Columbia, we are without a carbon tax for the first time in eighteen years, so the public is willing to tolerate one under the right circumstances. I agree that carbon taxes are not the ideal policy to focus on right now, but I suspect that they will become increasingly palatable once clean technologies become more widespread.
In a roundabout way, this brings up "rationing carbon". Just plain ole degrowth which king Don is enforcing on his 51st ( in his mindless mind ) state by tariffing it harshly.
Never leave a bottle of booze at an alcoholic's house. If they are attempting to recover it could hurt them and others
If they are not attempting to recover it will hurt them and others.
Leave the "alcohol" in the ground.
Thx for the calculations of the effect of NG in relation to coal use, taking methane leakage into account.
The affordability argument has the poorer strata of society at its center, if I am not wrong. That's why effectively pricing emissions - be it by taxes or by emission cap - has to use social compensation measures, like giving a part of the money or all back to the consumers, while giving the poor more. If this is done, the affordability issue vanishes, more or less, when you omit the whining rich. (If you *can* do this, is another matter, o.c.)
The problem here being, as so often, to suppose that one word, like "affordability", does say it all, while it doesn't.
I advocate the ‘all of the above’ approach. I personally am all for the European cap&trade systems, as flawed as they still may be, perticularly with respect to social compensation. Use the part of the emission-pricing revenue you did not pay back to the poor to finance decarbonization R&D and intelligent subsidies.
cheers and a successful 2026 - - -
Excellent framework for thinking through climate policy pragmatism. The 20 year vs 100 year methane timeframe debate is particualrly critical becuase it forces us to confront intergenerational tradeoffs explicitly. I've seen utilities use the shorter window to justify rushing gas infrastucture, but the discounting argument feels way more honest than pretending climate tipping points operate on such tight cycles.
Solid anlysis here on why subsidizing clean alternatives might just be politically smarter than penalizing fossil fuels. The gas-as-bridge argument always got pushback from some folks I worked with at energy conferences, but the data on coal displacement is kinda hard to ignore. I dunno if backstopping prices with a carbon tax would actually work though, since the political viability window for taxes seems narrow even when framed as a price floor.
"[Casten] also notes that leakage from US gas 'makes natural gas worse than coal from a global warming perspective.'"
----
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Congressman Casten, for introducing that talking point.
The point where atmospheric CH4 starts to climb again after leveling off corresponds to the fracking boom: https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/ch4_trend_all_gl.png
Note that we also know more about the *health effects* of having natgas piped into our homes and schools to be combusted for cooking and heating. Old stoves, water heaters and furnaces produce incomplete combustion products like CO, SOx, NOx and aldehydes. Get this into the discussion of the "new mom" forums (or Marge Simpson's copy of *Fretful Mother Magazine*), and we can get their support for getting rid of combustion appliances.
Hi Zeke, I'm afraid all this is really moot as it appears that Trump is going to decimate all govt. funded climate science in the near future. He has 3 more years of this and I quite frankly think that 3 years from now the field of climate science will be pretty much a thing of the past. I could be wrong of course...
You already are. To wit: the USA is just one country. Trump isn't King of the World, despite his grandiose delusions. China and the EU are decarbonizing on the strength of international climate science. Africans are building their national economies de novo with distributed solar power - no decarbonization necessary. We're free-riding on the rest of the world's collective actions. Worse: now we're flagrantly seizing small countries for their oil. You must be so proud!
Well done Zeke. Rather than following the cliche of "stop all fossil fuels", you have analysed the issue using real data.
Every time I see these high quality assessments, I agree we need action, but I'm reminded of the old Irish joke (modified here); "If you want to build a high efficiency power grid, I wouldn't start from here", because we have almost destroyed our grid in Australia by rushing into closing coal power stations without finding a way for renewables to replace that base load power. As a result, coal power stations have stopped closing-down and are being ordered to stay open decades longer, at least until 2049, and probably for the rest of this century, unless we build some nuclear power stations (again, don't panic). After spending $500 billion of borrowed money on renewable grids, that will impoverish the next 3 generations, our emissions are not falling much and our grid is at risk of complete failure. Many renewable projects are now way past their use-by date and many contribute nothing to the major cities, but we keep paying-out subsidies for these failed projects. Repairing our grid will keep the nation deeper in dept than we were during WW2 when our survival was at stake.
Often in engineering, we need to act more methodically and not adopt panic solutions that make things far worse. Now, the patching technology for renewable grids has a 10-year wait list and costs have trebled due to panic demand for massive grid stabilizers and complicated switching gear. My idea - sequentially replace coal with nuclear. Gas and batteries is far too expensive.
Just an engineering idea.
Thanks for this level-headed analysis.
It's not the most important question, but I'd love to see you, or someone else I trust, directly address and sort out the claims Yglesias and Casten and others have made about (1) the relative climate impact of different oil sources; and (2) the relative climate impact of coal burning on other continents vs. LNG shipped from the US. Here, unless I've missed something, you've discussed gas vs. coal only in the context of domestic consumption. And regarding oil, I guess I find it hard to believe that the differences between different sources are significant compared to the emissions from burning oil, regardless of the source--but I'm ready to be reeducated if necessary.
The climate impacts of exported LNG are complicated. On a GWP100 basis LNG is still generally better than coal, but low-cost LNG could also displace clean energy sources. On balance it might be a bit of a wash from a climate standpoint...
Some useful resources on the topic:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.4c07255
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/LNGUpdate_SummaryReport_Dec2024_230pm.pdf