Adaptation and Climate Change

The recent snow in Wellington – along with a class discussion on adaptation to climate change – got me thinking about an element of adapting climate change that I think is often overlooked.  That is the fact that, when assessing the ability of an area to adapt to climate change you must look at both the variability in the amount of temperature change that the region is likely to have,  so plus/minus however many degrees, relative to the normal annual variability in the region. 

For example, New Zealand is expected to have temperature change somewhere around +/- 2 degrees.  This is much different in terms of adaptation than a change of +/- 2 degrees in Boston.  The reason is pretty simple.  In Wellington annual temperatures typically range between roughly 35 and 75 degrees.  Even that might be a bit generous, generally if it’s below 40 degrees it’s exceptionally cold and it doesn’t often get much about 70.  A change of +/- 2 degrees represents 12% of the annual temperature change.  Compare this to Boston where temperatures range from well below zero to the high 90s or 100.  In that context +/- 2 degrees represents less than 2% of the annual change. 

The implications are that areas like Boston, with wide normal ranges are much more able to adapt to climate change than somewhere like Wellington.  In Boston people are accustomed to heating their homes in the winter and cooling them in the summer.  Conversely, in Wellington, homes are not designed to be heated in extremely cold (read: below 35 degree) weather.  So if weeks like this past one are going to become more common here it will require a significant investment in insulation and retrofitting a lot of long-term infrastructure.  Whereas if the average winter temperature in Boston drops from (I’m estimating here) 20 degrees to 18 degrees people will be a bit less comfortable and they’re going to spend a bit more on heating costs but they’re not going to have to put in new insulation, new windows and new heat pumps. 

I haven’t read much about this so I can’t point to other people’s thinking on it and it isn’t an earth-shattering revelation.  But it is one more minor aspect of climate change that will have to be dealt with going forward. 

The Buck Stops Here

By the end of the year we will have a clearer picture on exactly how committed Obama is to a clean energy future, a green economy, and environmental protection.  For some time now his failure to produce meaningful progress on these issues has been mediated in part by the existence of the Republicans and, more recently, the Tea Party.  To a limited degree, even his own party has presented obstacles to making progress on these issues.  Waxman-Markey died as much due to opposition from West Virginian Democrats as it did from Republican opposition. 

That is set to change by the end of the year.  The administration is now faced with a decision on the Keystone XL oil pipeline that is entirely up to the executive branch.  Because the pipeline would cross the U.S. border with Canada, approval of the project must come from the State Department.  Congress and the Republicans have no ground from which to effect the outcome (despite their attempts).  Granted, Obama is not in charge of the State Department.  However, it seems absurd to believe that if the Whitehouse opposed the project, the State Department would allow it to continue or vice versa. 

Certainly there are jobs to be created by approving the pipeline, and the U.S. economy desperately needs jobs.  It will also reduce our dependence on oil from the Middle East (although, perhaps it’s only semantics, it will not reduce our dependence on foreign oil).  It will also help out the battered economy of the Gulf Coast.  But let it be clear.  Approving this project cannot be justified by the jobs it will create or by the reduction in oil imports from the Middle East. 

Not when these benefits are stacked against the costs of allowing the project to go forward.  These costs start with the environmental impacts.  The oil in the tar sands is exceptionally polluting.  Some estimates suggest that burning the oil in the Canadian tar sands would set the global irrevocably on the path to over 500 ppm CO₂.  Further, as the spill in Michigan last year demonstrated, when these pipelines go wrong, there are severe consequences.  And they tend to go wrong more often than anticipated.  Perhaps more important than the environmental concerns however,  for all the jobs that this pipeline would create, there are far more to be had if the U.S. gets serious about clean, renewable energy.  While stopping this project won’t move that agenda forward on it’s own, allowing it to go forward sends a clear message that the U.S. is not serious about clean energy - we are, in fact, committed to oil for the next half-century or more. 

So, Obama is called upon to answer for comments that the U.S. build a new country and new economy based on clean energy and green jobs.  The project will either be approved, and continue the country along a path of oil dependence and under-investment in renewable energy.  Or Obama will show that he does stand for what he says and the project will be stopped.  Either way, he can no longer hide behind the excuse that it was someone else’s fault. 

Something to think on

What if...

Cast your mind back to the summer of 2009 for a moment.  As you might recall, there were two major policy proposals being discussed in Washington that summer.  One was the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill and the other was Obama’s Healthcare Bill.  One of these got the weight of the President fully behind it and one of them didn’t.  Consequently, the healthcare bill made it out of Congress and into law and Waxman-Markey died when the Senate couldn’t come up with their own version of a climate bill.  While passing this healthcare bill has been hailed as one of the highlights (or lowlights, depending on who is asked) of Obama’s Presidency thus far, what if, rather than being a highlight, choosing to prioritize the healthcare bill was this biggest political mistake that Obama has made as President? 

This premise rests on a few ideas:  (1) that Obama had enough political capital at the time to pass one of the two bills but not both and that he chose healthcare instead of climate, (2) that the healthcare bill is the, or one of the, primary motivator(s) for the Tea Party, (3) if Obama loses in November 2012 it will be because of the economy and (4) a climate bill would have been a boost to the economy.  So let’s explore these four ideas.  First, however, note that this is not an examination of which of these policies was the right one to choose from the perspective of what they will accomplish – health care reform was desperately needed and climate change is a massive problem that must be addressed – or an examination of how Obama has performed as President.  It is simply looking at whether, by choosing healthcare over climate, Obama made his political life more difficult. 

Starting with the idea that Obama had enough political capital to get one of these two policies passed.  He came into office with a massive groundswell of support after the Bush years.  Although this was undercut slightly by the unpopularity of the bailouts and TARP funding he was still in quite good shape by the summer of 2009.  His personal approval rating in June 2009 was 67%.  This obviously isn’t conclusive evidence that he had the political capital to do whichever he wanted – clearly he couldn’t do both though – but there is no really good measure of political capital.  So for the sake of argument say that 67% approval rating, combined with the fact that 71% of “likely voters” supported the Waxman-Markey bill, meant that if Obama had chosen to back it, we would now have climate legislation.

Now, to be fair, there are several people who think that Obama didn’t so much choose to endorse healthcare over climate change as he was forced to do so by the makeup of Congress and his own party.  I don’t buy this argument.  In part because of what has happened since then.  I think that Obama was forced to endorse healthcare only insomuch as his leadership style, or lack thereof, is very hands off.  He doesn’t dictate the debate; he allows the debate to be dictated and then tries to stake out a position in the middle.  This is not leadership, and it isn’t what I’d expect from a President.  “Leading from behind” as it was recently termed, is not really leading. 

So on to the next idea, that the healthcare bill is the leading motivator of the Tea Party.  Although the Tea Party was started in the spring of 2009, mostly in response to the bailouts on Wall Street, it really got going in the summer and fall of 2009 (the notable rally was held in DC in September) during the debate over healthcare.  It was at the town hall meetings discussing the bill that the Tea Party gained most of its notoriety.  While I think that the Tea Party would have developed in the absence of the Healthcare Bill, I think that it would have been less widespread and less politically important in its absence.  The Healthcare Bill gave the Tea Party two things: (1) it threatened people on a very personal level (they’re going to “Kill Granny” with their “death panels”) that riled people up and (2) it appeared, rightly or wrongly, unconstitutional, thus appealing to the notion that by opposing it the Tea Party was returning America to it’s constitutional roots.  The climate change bill would have offered neither of these things – and I think – taken away quite a bit of the draw of the Tea Party. 

So here is the first reason I think choosing healthcare was a political mistake:  it drove the creation of the strongest and most vitriolic opposition that Obama faces.  I’d suggest that the climate bill, while it probably would have hurt some people economically (more on that in a minute) would not have had the same effect on the Tea Party.  There was nothing in the bill that could have been construed as unconstitutional.  Furthermore, there is nothing comparable to the death panel claims, except perhaps, claims of killing jobs.  That doesn’t cause quite the same visceral reaction that saying a bill will kill you does.  Finally, the climate bill is based on cap and trade, a fundamentally Republican idea, introduced by the paragon of Republican virtue himself, Ronald Reagan. 

Now, the idea that if Obama loses in November 2012 it will be because of the economy.  I think this a pretty uncontroversial statement.  It’s pretty well documented that the fortunes of President’s rise and fall on the economy.  This leads into the last point then, that the climate bill would have helped the economy. 

This is probably the most controversial part of the theory.  Indeed, most of the opposition to the bill stemmed from the fact that it was seen as a job killer.  In some areas it certainly would have been.  West Virginia, Wyoming, the other coal states, would have been hit pretty hard.  But overall, a climate bill would likely have led to job creation.  See here, here, here, here, and here for reasons why.  But, the basic idea is that there is a ton of money looking to be invested in renewable technologies and energy and areas that have made policies to encourage this investment are seeing job creation and lower rates of unemployment.  Passing climate change legislation would have gone a long way towards creating those policies on a national scale and, as a result, produced national scale job creation. 

Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, these effects would have begun to appear by the time the election takes place in 2012.  This means that the economy would have begun to improve, improving Obama’s chances, and that there would be direct evidence to counter allegations made by is opposition. Instead, he is burdened with a healthcare bill that inspires very strong opposition, does little if anything to create jobs, and the effects of which – good or bad – will not be seen for years, providing him with no ammunition to counter critics of the bill. 

Obviously, it’s impossible to say whether all of this would have happened the way it’s laid out here.  Maybe the Tea Party would have found something in the climate bill just as offensive as in the healthcare bill.  I don’t think that this is a particularly outrageous scenario though and I do think that passing the climate bill would have had benefits in a lot of areas unrelated to the climate (reduced political opposition, improved economy and therefore less problems with the deficit) that have bedeviled Obama for the last 16 months.