IF YOU read much about global warming, you'll have noticed that the solutions offered seem a little narrow:  on the one hand, solar and wind energy; and on the other, drastic reduction in carbon emissions.  These may be the best solutions; it is even possible that they are the only ones.  But it doesn't seem likely.  Carbon sequestration, for example, which (apparently relatively cost effectively) neutralises emissions from coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, gets surprisingly little coverage.  Especially when compared to things like hydrogen fuel cells, which absolutely nothing to reduce carbon emissions by themselves, since hydrogen has to be made at great (energy) cost before it can be poured into fuel cells*.  Why does abatement, rather than prevention, get so little attention?

Mark Kleiman says it is because the abatement solution does not help reach other goals of the green movement:

To those who dislike a social system based on high and growing consumption and the economic activity that supports high and growing consumption and maintains high and growing demand (a dislike with which I have considerable sympathy), to those who think that the market needs more regulation by the state, to those who think that international institutions ought to be strengthened in order to limit the scope for national selfishness, and to those (an overlapping but not identical group) that thinks current attitudes toward maintaining the planet we inhabit are much too casual and insufficiently reverent, global warming is a Gaia-send. It means that the current pattern of activity is unsustainable, and it requires fairly drastic public action on a worldwide scale. Their eagerness to believe the worst (cf. An Inconvenient Truth) is just as evident as the right wing's denialism. That's not to say the two sides are equally wrong, just that neither side starts from an impartial position in examining the science.

To those dreaming happily of all the new taxes and regulations that will be necessary to contain energy consumption, chortling at the consequent discomfiture of Humvee owners and ExxonMobil's tame politicians, and hoping for a new era of environmental consciousness, a solution to global warming that didn't involve reining in consumption and imposing new taxes and regulations would be as welcome as rain at a picnic.

. . . So why is [abatement via geoengineering] still a fringe topic? Partly, of course, because of the stupidity of the anti-environmentalist right and its corporate sponsors, for whom denying the existence of any environmental problem is by now strongly conditioned reflex. (As liberals discovered about crime in the late 60s and early 70s, once you're identified with denying that a problem exists you don't have much cred when you insist that you have a better, less costly solution to it.) But largely, I submit, because the people who think Earth in the Balance was one of Al Gore's accomplishments rather than one of the strongest reasons to doubt his fitness to be President really don't want an non-Gaian, non-regulatory solution to their most precious problem.

His commenters argue that geoengineering is an untried infant science, while we know that reducing works  . . . true, but surely no more true than solar panels were 35 years ago, when America celebrated its first Earth Day?  To be sure, there are many environmentalists who are willing to make tradeoffs to fix big problems; Greenpeace's embrace of nuclear energy is an admirable example.  But it does seem that the green movement is often unduly fixated on reducing consumption rather than seeking ways to alleviate its results.  In consequence, as Mr Kleiman points out, they often sound uncomfortably like supporters of abstinence-only sex education.  Abatement may have a higher failure rate than abstinence, but rare is the human who can live a virtuous, carbon-free existence.

But why do these beliefs cluster at all?  Why are pro-business types less likely to believe in global warming, even when supported by the science they claim to adore?  And why should a belief in unrestricted abortion rights, redistributive income taxes, and gay marriage cluster with a belief that industrial emissions are warming the planet?  A brilliant essay by Michael Huemer explores the phenomenon:





Some of the explanation is surely self-interest:  for both environmental and unrelated reasons, most of the journalists and environmentalists who talk to the journalists live in dense areas, where they will be less bothered by regulations and taxes aimed at reducing emissions.  Conversely, it would be too much to expect oil companies not to grasp at straws when told that their product is slowly poisoning the atmosphere.

What is interesting is that both sides of the debate are basically saying the same thing:  we've got a big, complex system that we don't quite understand here, so let's not take any drastic action that could irrevocably muck it up.  Only the climate change sceptics are saying it about the economy, while the advocates are saying it about the atmosphere.  Both sides tend to dismiss essentially the same argument when made by opponents.

A measure of the difficulty of reducing emissions is that Europe, which is by far the world citizen most committed to change, hasn't managed it; other than Britain, which got credit for an independantly motivated conversion from coal power to natural gas, and Germany, which got credit for the independantly motivated utter collapse of highly polluting East German industry, there has been surprisingly little actual progress towards Kyoto goals.  The problem is even deeper in America, and not just because Americans don't seem to care much about the topic. 

Transportation and heating are huge sources of emissions, and much easier to conserve on when your country is densely populated, as is Europe, which has little free land, and almost all its urban infrastructure built up before the mass marketing of the automobile.  America has the geographic misfortune to be hotter in its hot bits than Europe, and colder in its cold bits.  (Surprised?  Compare Minneapolis to Oslo).  It also has large swathes that require both heavy central heating in winter, and air conditioning in summer:  From New York City to Chicago to St Louis, life is pretty unbearable—and more than occasionally fatal—without both a solid furnace and a least a few air conditioners running full time.  And, of course, its newer and faster growing bits are sprawling, not dense, and will not support public transportation.  Nor is it easy to persuade your citizens to live densely when there is enough attractive land to give everyone a detached with a yard, just over the next hill.

That is not to say that America couldn't reduce its emissions by, for example, looking for smaller and more fuel efficient cars.  But there is little hope for immediate, huge transformation in its commuting habits; any light rail built in its newer, less dense cities may well increase emissions, as they run half-empty through neighbourhoods too sparsely populated to fill them.  Nor will the millions of people who have moved to Phoenix (average July highs 40 degrees centigrade) going to give up their air conditioning without a very fierce fight.

Given those problems, and the even larger problems of what to do about the billions of people who emit nothing because they currently have nothing, abatement would seem to be an obvious avenue to pursue.  Obvious, at least, if global warming is the problem you are actually trying to solve. 

* At best, they offer comparitively minor arbitrage of the differences in efficiency between internal combustion engines and steam turbines.