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The Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) (or, perhaps, simply staff) has embraced anti-science syndrome with a fervor that should astound anyone with the slightest regard for the scientific method and for the scientific community (communities). .  Here is an excerpt from an RPV-email attacking Democratic Party candidate for Attorney General Steve Shannon:

In Shannon’s only opportunity to question Cuccinelli, he essentially asked why his opponent did not fully agree with those who say that global warming is threatening modern civilization. The query puts Shannon squarely in line with those in the environmental lobby and the Democratic wings of Congress who are aggressively pursuing Cap-and-Trade legislation, a known job killer that will increase the price of energy, boost the cost of doing business and raise expenses for every person living in the United States.

Cap-and-Trade is a scheme in which entities that exceed a government-imposed emission limit would be forced to buy “credits” from entities which emit amounts under the limits. Many analysts and employers have concluded that the idea would increase costs to consumers and severely limit the ability of private companies to create jobs.

There are several fundamental elements to this and its absurdities … and outrage against sensible dialogue for achieving a more secure and prosperous future for Virginia and Virginia.  .

First, this is a clear statement attacking the scientific understanding of climate change and the fundamental risks that we face due to the potential for unchecked catastrophic climate change.  The RPV (and, as per below, Cuccinelli) might wish to consider actually looking at what the scientific community is saying about climate change and the potential for catastrophic climate change, rather than wearing blinders to reality while glued to Faux News’ truthiness and disinformation. No matter how loudly Glenn Beck or James Inhofe pontificate, no matter how many times the Washington Post publishes George Will’s falsehoods and misdirections (here as well), no matter how glib fossil-foolish shills might appear on TV or at Heritage, eventually rhetoric slams into reality and reality.  Of course, these pundits and shills merit more attention than the American Physical Society, the National Academies of Science, and essentially every significant scientific institution in the globe.  Putting aside the “science”, if one wants to make a bet about the future that is fundamentally about the science, do you want to be listening to television pundits and scientists who argued that tobacco had nothing to do with cancer (while paid by the tobacco industry) or the premier scientific instutions in the globe?  Evidently, the RPV goes with pundtocracy over scientific meritocracy.

Second, these paragraphs egregiously misrepresent the impacts of Cap and Trade legislation. In typical anti-action, pro-p0llution manner, these words only look at “cost” without any indication of understanding that there is “benefit”.  There is a reason that it is “cost-benefit analysis,” not simply talking about “costs”.  In other words, there will be “costs” to act, but also benefits. Considering expansion of US industry through ‘green’ technologies, competitiveness due to reduced energy costs, reduced imports via lower oil demand, the “costs” of acting on climate change are minimal. But, these is a rather stove-piped examination of “benefits”. Considering reduced health-care costs due to reduced pollution impacts, improved productivity due to ‘green’ buildings and healthier employees, and so on, the cost-benefit analysis of acting seriously to mitigate climate change ends up in a highly-profitable balance book even without considering the benefits of reducing the risks of catastrophic climate change (which, of course, the RPV seems to consider some form of radical fantasy  rather than simply the resulting understanding of the work of thousands of highly-qualified scientists of humanity’s impacts on the global system).

Third, let us take the standard misrepresentation (actually set of misrepresentations) and deflections to confuse and anger people about moves to mitigate catastrophic climate change. In continuing the stove-piping, the RPV asserts that Cap and Trade is “a known job killer that will increase the price of energy, boost the cost of doing business and raise expenses for every person living in the United States”.  Well … sigh. While sensible climate legislation will increase the unit cost for polluting energy options, it will also create conditions for societal investments in energy efficiency (whether into existing infrastructure or in smart growth).  If you pay 1 cent more per kilowatt hour of electricity (roughly a 10 percent growth) but standards improvements lead to a 20, 30, or 50% decrease in electricity use, then there is a net reduced cost of eney and reduced expenses for a massive share of Americans, even if not “every person living in the United States.”  Studies by business analysis organizations like McKinsey and Company have shown net benefits to the average Americans, in terms of money in the wallet, due to the American Clean Energy & Security (ACES) Act’s provisions for improving energy-efficiency standards in building codes and improving appliance standards.

Finally, in an amusing side note, these paragraphs suggest that Shannon’s only substantive confrontation and interaction with Cuccinelli came when it came to climate change. Reasoned and ‘neutral’ discussion of the debate provides a quite different picture of what was a rather heated discussion. To provide an indication that there was more to this debate than a simple question re climate change science,

Host Mark Plotkin didn’t have to do very much to keep the conversation going; at one point Plotkin said: “This has been such a precedent shattering event where the candidates say enough ugly things about each other that I don’t even have to question them!”

And, from that discussion:

“Shannon accused Cuccinelli of denying evidence of climate change. Cuccinelli did not deny it.”

Yes, the Republican Party of of Virginia’s candidate for Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, did not deny that he is an Anti-Science Syndrome suffering Hater Of a Livable Environment for Virginia.

Note: Should it surprise anyone that, as Republican Party hacks reject science, scientists are rejecting the Republican Party.

Hat tip to Blue Virginia.

This is a guest post from the very thoughtful citisven about the potential that actions within and by cities have for changing the game when it comes to climate change.  This is the “real world” (compared to the interesting fantasy of Ecopolis)  of what is happening to change the world for the better. Our challenge, of course, is to see that these cities, these approaches are not the exception, but the norm. And, to see that their actions do not continue, but accelerate, expand, strengthen … But, let citisven explain.

Imagine an entity so big and powerful that it could conserve tons of energy and make a huge dent in carbon emissions. It might resemble a place you’ve seen before but wouldn’t recognize…

And imagine another entity shedding its drab fossil fuel suit, reappearing energized by the sun, clad in solar panels and rooftop gardens. It might look like this:

The entities I am talking about are, of course, Cities, and their role in shifting humanity from cheap energy gluttons to living within our ecological means must be nothing short of Super: The time has come for the urban Clark Kent to put on the green cape.

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This is a guest post from NB41, who is top-notch in the wind energy world and on how to integrate renewable power into the energy system.

Senator Kerry and Boxer introduced, yesterday, the Clean Energy, Jobs, and American Power Act. This bill is an alternative to/similar to the so-called ACES bill (Waxman-Markey Bill) which recently passed the House, albeit in a severely wimped out/compromised form

Beneath the fold is my reply to Senator Kerry, calling attention to the value of Feed-In Tariffs (FITs) for driving more rapid renewable energy integration into the electric system.

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Well designed, a cap with a collar can be a truly gorgeous thing.

To spark movement away from our carbon addiction, for business (financial) planning, and to gain enough support to pass climate legislation, any “Cap and Trade” structure almost certainly will have to have a “collar” to go with its “cap” on carbon emissions.

To be released tomorrow, the Boxer-Kerry climate legislation looks to include floor and ceiling prices to allowance auctions. Thus, a “collar” guaranteeing both a minimum price and a maximum price, which enables some degree of certainty for planning (government, business, otherwise) in terms of cost while providing some space for ‘trading’ prices to reflect actual demand/supply for carbon permits.

As Joe Romm at Climate Progress notes

The bill makes a monumental improvement over the House bill by adopting a version of the carbon collar …

The floor price is $11 (the draft bill above is, as I say, not final) and the ceiling is $28 — and they both starting rising 5% plus inflation each year.  The draft bill adds an excellent twist — from 2018 on the ceiling rises 7% plus inflation each year.  …

Fence-sitting Senators and industries can legitimately see the Carbon Collar as achieving stronger cost-containment protection than their analysis suggests the House bill now provides, including protection against speculators running the permit price up, while progressives can legitimately see it as achieving better environmental outcomes than their analysis suggests the House bill now provides.Win-win.

Severe volatility can be destructive, creating demands for near term change that might undermine achievement of long-term objectives, and moving off our carbon addiction is a long-term objective (requiring a near-term serious start).  A floor/ceiling on allowance prices would constrain the extent of volatibility

Certainty enables planning and long-term investment, the type of planning and investment required to move toward a prosperous, climate-friendly society.  A floor/ceiling on allowance prices would provide certainty as to the “worst” and “best” case in terms of direct carbon costs.

Thus, on the face of it, placing a price collar on allowance auctions for a Cap and Trade program makes much sense.

However … “on the face of it …” Some examples of issues to consider:

Will polluters pay?

A A core principle for any climate legislation is that polluters should pay, that polluting the air our children breathe and the water they drink is no longer some “externality” that is given a free ride.  Just like paying for trash pickup at the home or a dump fee when hauling that decrepit mattress to the county dump, people and businesses should pay for dumping their carbon pollution.  Placing significant (actually any) portions of the carbon cap into giveaway programs to subsidize polluters undermines (rips to shred) this basic principle, undermines the power of the allowance price collar, invites future speculation, and will undermine the effectiveness of our efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Collaring speculators

Placing the allowance price increases at above inflation creates an incentive to reduce emissions sooner rather than later since it is certain that the cost will be higher, in real terms, from one year to the next. This helps counter the basic fiscal calculation of net present value (NPV) which discounts future costs (or gains) to try to understand the value of a $1 a decade from now in today’s terms (which would, a conservative sense, be about 50 cents of value). The proposed guaranteed increases put the carbon costs in the range of typical discounting formulas, thus encouraging an appropriate fiscal (green-eye shade) calculation of reducing pollution today vs reducing pollution tomorrow in a way that reduces incentives to put off cost-effective pollution options.

But, there is a speculative problem to consider. If guaranteed a minimum price increase of a minimum of 5% above inflation, does this create incentives for serious fiscal speculation. Why not buy some carbon credits for long-term investing, knowing that you can sell for that minimum price growing above inflation with the potential, at least, for significant growth above that if the permits are trading above the minimum price? Considering the item above, what if you’re a polluting industry which receives significant carbon allowances for free?

Thus, how allowances are “banked” and provisions for constraining this sort of fiscal speculation could matter. For a variety of reasons, it might make sense to ‘degrade’ unused permits, retiring them on some schedule to enable doing better than targets and to restrain/control speculation.

On the positive … driving change faster …
There is a serious value to the collar, especially on the low side. If the analysis is correct. If “proponents” (like me) of options like energy efficiency are on target. If technology rises to the fore. If people begin to undertake personal/cultural shifts. If … If many things that I (and others) see likely if significant legislation occurs and business/government begin to take climate change seriously, then the progress on cutting emissions could be striking and significant.

We are, already, at more than half the emissions reductions targeted by the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy & Security (ACES) Act for 2020! Actual targeted emissions reductions could be achieved virtually by sleep walking (if the sleep walker is pointed in the right direction). In the face of this, without a collar (without a floor price), carbon allowance values could fall to essentially free since there would be so many more allowances than actual pollution.

The floor price will incentivize people to continue to find ways to cut emissions, even if the “free market” price of allowances for the that year’s ‘authorized’ pollution would be near free.

From my perspective, for the next 10+ years, it seems almost certain that the floor will have more impact on actual carbon prices than the ceiling … thus, having that floor will help drive more emissions cuts than a program without a cost collar.

Details to be seen …

Boxer-Kerry will be released tomorrow. And, then it goes into the Senate sausage making process (as if it hasn’t already been sausage-making). On a wide range of issues, we will need to create momentum to strengthen the bill while fighting efforts to weaken it.
Thus, how allowances are “banked” and provisions for constraining this sort of fiscal speculation could matter.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been working hard to water down and delay government action on climate change.  Their work seems, consistently, to be representative of their Global Warming denier board member Don Blankenship rather than members like Nike, who have issued strong statements about climate change. U.S. C.O.C.’s counterproductive truthiness on Climate Change has led member Corporations to leave behind their membership, at what seems to be an accelerating pace.  In face of the latest departure, U.S. C.O.C. spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel , according to greenInc at the New York Times, said that the group’s position had been misrepresented in media reports. Wohlschlegel assert that

“We’ve never questioned the science behind global warming,”

Perhaps truthiness so dominates thinking there that they really think this true or, well, perhaps Eric and others at US COC think we’ll all simply “easily deceived; dupes” (in other words, suckers).

“… never questioned …”?

Perhaps before issuing such declarative statements, Eric might wish to consider that Al Gore isn’t only know for winning a Nobel Prize for informing people about the scientific Theory of Global Warming but also for being a politician who helped foster the environment for the eventual emergence of the internet and world-wide web. Yes, Eric, Google search exists and people like Brad Johnson at the Wonkroom know about it. Brad saw Eric’s statement and did some “Google”. And, well, Eric’s comment didn’t stand up so well.

This is a blatant falsehood, by any definition. The Chamber has a long history of questioning the science of climate change. The Chamber’s present campaign against regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency questions the existence of global warming as well as the scientific evidence of its impacts on the public health and welfare. The Chamber promotes global warming denier books “to advance our thinking about issues of significance,” and has promoted the work of global warming denier Pat Michaels since at least 1992:

2009: Chamber SVP Kovacs Calls For ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ On The ‘Science Of Climate Change.’ “It would be evolution versus creationism. It would be the science of climate change on trial.” Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President William Kovacs explained that the Chamber was seeking a “Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” on global warming to prevent the EPA from declaring greenhouse gases a threat to the public welfare. [Los Angeles Times, 8/25/09]

2009: Chamber Claims No ‘Plausible Theory’ To Link ‘Climate Change With Extreme Weather Events And Disease In The United States,’ Disputes ‘Claims Of Ocean Acidification.’ In an official filing prepared by the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis for the comments on the EPA’s proposed endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce cited blog posts by global warming deniers such as Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger to challenge a broad range of climate change science, including sea level rise and the “UN/IPCC forecasted temperature increases.” [U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 8/25/09]

2009: National Chamber Foundation Promotes Global Warming Denier Book As ‘#1? Top Book Of The Year. Promoting “Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Foundation writes: “Climatologists Patrick J. Michaels and Robert Balling Jr. explain that climate science is hardly unbiased,” and that the “pop-culture icons of climate change turns out to be short on facts and long on exaggeration.” On Twitter, the National Chamber Foundation ranked the book “#1? in its “Top Books of ‘09.” [National Chamber Foundation, 8/20/09]

2008: National Chamber Foundation Promotes Global Warming ‘Deniers’ Book Against ‘Global Warming Hysteria.’ The National Chamber Foundation selected “The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution and Fraud; And those who are too fearful to do so” by Lawrence Solomon to “help shape the debate on issues important to the business community.” [National Chamber Foundation, 2008]

And so on.  Brad’s work provided numerous sourced examples of the U.S. C.O.C. ‘questioning the science’ and funding/promoting those questioning the science dating back to the George H.W. Bush Administration.

1992: Chamber Sponsors Global Warming Denier Pat Michaels To ‘Refute The Global Warming Warnings.’ “Bankrolled partly by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Global Climate Coalition, a group of manufacturers fearful of new environmental regulations, Patrick Michaels and Washington, D.C., attorney Eugene M. Trisko have been traveling cross-country to refute the global warming warnings from environmentalists.” [Chicago Sun-Times, 5/13/1992]

Perhaps “never” won’t slip so easily from Eric’s lips in the future.

Another in the series of guest posts from the ever-thoughtful BruceMcF (who is Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence) re rail transport.

The people’s choice award in the Re-Burbia “Rethinking Suburbia” design competition was the entry titled Urban Sprawl Repair Kit: Repairing The Urban Fabric.

But I want to adapt these ideas from the repair of the urban fabric to the original creation of a healthy suburban fabric. From further below:

After all, no matter how much one may love big cities – big cities have never been the be-all and end-all of settlement. Part of a healthy big city economy is a healthy network of relationships to a surrounding network of healthy smaller cities. And part of what makes them healthy is a healthy network of relationships to healthy small towns and villages. …

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Being an EcoGeek is becoming ever more fashionable. And, increasingly, there are events where EcoGeek’s can gather in style.

Every two years, for two weeks, a village appears on the National Mall providing a window on possibilities for a sustainable future powered by the sun.

The Solar Decathlon is a biennial, ever-cool event, pitting colleges and universities across the nation in ten contests that “center on the ways we use energy in our daily lives.”

The Solar Decathlon is a competition in which teams of college and university students compete to design, build, and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar powered house.

The fourth Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon comes to Washington, DC, soon and will be open to the public 9-13 and 15-18 October.

The contest is quite focused:

The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon challenges 20 university-led teams from around the world in 10 contests to design, build, and operate the most attractive, energy-efficient, solar-powered house. Solar Decathlon houses must power all the home energy needs of a typical family using only the power of the sun. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends aesthetics and modern conveniences with maximum energy production and optimal efficiency.

What is the basic criteria?

To compete, the teams must design and build energy-efficient homes that are powered exclusively by the sun. The homes must be attractive and easy to live in. They must maintain a comfortable temperature, provide attractive and adequate lighting, power household appliances for cooking and cleaning, power home electronics, and provide hot water. These houses must also power an electric vehicle to meet household transportation needs.

Walking through the Solar Decathlon, it is hard not to have many “I want that” moments or think “I could live in this” (actually, I want to live in this).  Wandering around, the “oohs” and “ahs” of attendees, at all ages, are constant. (My children, for example, definitely want to go back again, having been to the past two.)  If you can, this is an Energy COOL must do event.

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All too often, those engaged in examining options for “greening” a new or existing building are constrained in a stove-piped cost analysis which (in a very simplified fashion) goes something along these lines:

• How much more will it cost to build?
• And, how fast will energy and other operating cost (water usage/sewers, maintenance) savings pay for those additional costs?

This typical analytical structure is mistaken on multiple levels. For example, with a truly holistic systems-of-systems process “going green” can actually drove down the initial costs (or remain at levelized cost) because, for example, better insulated and sealed building envelopes enable smaller heating and cooling systems. Thus, the better insulation might increase capital costs while procuring a smaller HVAC system cuts them.

But, putting aside the quite legitimate question as to whether well-designed “greening” actually drives up costs, stove-piping analysis on operating cost savings to pay back increase upfront capital costs excludes what is likely to be the far more significant implications for things like productivity.

A new study, Green Building and Productivity (pdf), from researchers at the University of San Diego’s business school institute on real estate focuses directly on this issue. The core question could be phrased as follows:  Are workers in “green” buildings more or less productive than those in traditional structures?

The study examines a wide-range of issues related to the difficulties of measuring office productivity, various (potential) impacts on productivity, and studies related to these issues. For this effort, they use sick days and a “self-reported productivity percentage change after moving into a new building” as their metrics.  With this in mind, the research team surveyed 154 buildings with some 2000 tenants.

Across these buildings and tenants, they calculated an average salary/benefits of $106,644. And, when comparing “green” to non-green buildings, their work showed a reduction in sick leave of 2.88 days per year, on average, and a 4.88% productivity improvement.  That translates, based on the salaries, to a value to the employer of $1,228.54 due to reduced sick leave and $5,204 due to productivity increases.

Healthier buildings reduce sick time and increase productivity. The steps required to provide a healthier building are not that much of a design and engineering challenge. Generally natural light, good ventilation, the absence of organic compounds provides happier, healthier workers. Appropriate temperature ranges or localized controls is also a big plus to workers and past research does support the notion of greater productivity from any or all of these improvements. Sick building syndrome should be a thing of the past, but it is not. Energy Star-labeled buildings need not also be healthier although generally they appear to be and more recently we are finding a surge in LEED buildings which tend to require better and safer environments. We now have some evidence that there is an economic pay-off to tenants who pay attention to space quality.

Okay, a “healthier” working environment is more productive but what is the cost of that productivity?  Do the upfront costs outweigh those benefits?

What is increased productivity and reduced sick time worth in net present value terms? The early study by Greg Kats (2003) suggested NPV benefits in the range of $37 to $55 per square foot. For an owner-occupied building we can easily imagine NPVs equal to much more than these figures. For example, discounting $25 per year per square foot for 10 years at 10%, based on the sum of the two benefits shown above and rounded and assuming a 10-year differential for such benefits and a fairly conservative discount rate, we get a present value of $153.61 per square foot. It costs much less than this to building a better environment for workers, so the net present value certainly could reach $100 per square foot or more when an owner-occupant captures those benefits.

In other words, for an owner-occupied building, paying a $50+ premium for “green” on construction would provide a three-to-one payoff, in net present value terms over a 10 year period.

Oh, remember about “stove-piping”? Green Building and Productivity (pdf) is focused on that productivity question. It is not addressing the utility bill savings (lower energy and water use, reduced sewer fees due to rainwater capture, etc), reduced maintenance costs (such as white roofs lasting longer), and other operating savings that energy efficient “green” buildings show compared to traditional, built-to-code buildings. In other words, the payoff ratios are even better — especially because well-designed “green” projects might not even cost more to build.

We have quite a long way to go before there is true full value analysis in the cost-benefit equation of infrastructure (and other) investment decisions. Even recognizing those limitations, getting building owners (and occupants) to realize that the “greening” value goes beyond energy savings will be quite important.

For a related discussion, see: Greening the School House. Quite simply, Greening Schools is perhaps one of the clearest ‘no brainer’ no regrets strategies that we should be pursuing aggressively. I cannot think of another opportunity to boost educational performance while cutting costs and improving the health of our children and communities while also helping turn the tide on Global Warming.

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When it comes to ACCCE, Duke Energy and Alstom Just Did It.

When it comes to the US Chamber of Commerce, PG&E and PNM Resources Just Did It.

When it comes to the US Chamber of Commerce, Nike Just Can’t Seem to Do It.

What is it?  Reconciling a Corporation’s affiliation with scientific understanding of climate change issues and its Corporate affiliations and memberships.
Duke, Alstom, PNM Resources, and Nike all agree that climate change is real, that it is driven by human activity (primarily burning of fossil fuels), and that action (framed by government policy) is necessary to create the conditions for avoiding catastrophic climate change.

The American Coalition for  Clean-Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is a coal-industry front organization that has been fighting, hard, against meaningful US action on climate change.  Duke Energy and Alstom were ACCCE members who chose to leave the organization due to fundamental differences between their understanding of science and ACCCE’s “negative” approach. As Alstom’s CEO put it,

We simply didn’t agree with their position, which was a negative position.

We’ve adopted the US CAP position, which we see as a positive position.

We couldn’t, could we, remain members of two organizations with such different messages?

Like ACCCE, the US Chamber of Commerce has been using its prominence and its resources to fight progress to the prosperity of a clean-energy economy.  Thus, PNM Resources just announced its departure from USCOC:

At PNM Resources, we see climate change as the most pressing environmental and economic issue of our time.  Given that view, and a natural limit on both company time and resources, we have decided that we can be most productive by working with organizations that share our view on the need for thoughtful, reasonable climate change legislation and want to push that agenda forward in Congress.  These organizations include the Edison Electric Institute, the association of shareholder-owned electric companies, and the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a group of businesses and environmental organizations of which we are a founding member.

Nike has quite publicly stated  its strong frustration with the USCOC over climate issues.

“Nike fundamentally disagrees with the US Chamber of Commerce’s position on climate change and is concerned and deeply disappointed with the US Chamber’s recently filed petition challenging the EPA’s administrative authority and action on this critically important issue.

Nike believes that climate change is an urgent issue affecting the world today and that businesses and their representative associations need to take an active role to invest in sustainable business practices and innovative solutions to address the issue. It is not a time for debate but instead a time for action and we believe the Chamber’s recent petition sets back important work currently being undertaken by EPA on this issue.

Nike helped to found BICEP, a coalition of businesses supporting congressional action to address strong U.S. climate and energy legislation. Nike has worked to address its own environmental footprint through the development of more sustainable products, energy efficiency programs and emission reductions.”

Despite Nike “fundamentally disagree[ing] with the US Chamber of Commerce’s position on climate change,” unlike Duke Energy, Alstom, PG&E, PNR Resources and others, Nike Just Can’t Do It.

Sigh …

Nike …

JUST DO IT!

One of the real pleasures for reality-based observers of the Obama Administration is the number of thoughtful members of the Administration members, who are not just worth listening to, but who can make seeing the world in different ways an interesting and enjoyable experience.  Dr. John Holdren, the President’s Science Advisor, took his quite significant scientific expertise and turned to a path to figure out how to communicate science and the value of science to policy makers and the more general public.  In his appearance at the Council on Competitiveness‘ National Energy Summit, as part of a panel on Spawning Technological Breakthroughs and Entrepreneurship, Holdren laid out the priority:

It needs emphasizing. The single most critical issue is to put a price on Greenhouse Gases that will incentivize action.

Why does this matter? What is the criticality?  Well, Holdren talked about harvesting fruit in the context of seizing opportunities, even while creating new opportunities to seize, in our energy and climate challenges. In essence, there are three levels of fruit to be harvested:

• Low-hanging fruit: valuable and cost-effective today, where we have the technology and capacities to act with clear benefits.
• Mid-hanging fruit: these become valuable with a carbon price, increasing competitiveness.
• High-hanging fruit: arenas where we don’t necessarily have the technology or can’t do this cost-effectively, but where a price signal and clear policy will incentivize research and development to solve the problem and bring solutions ‘into reach’.

A very simple image to lay out what we have in hand, what we could reach with a little assistance, and what sustained dedication to the problem will bring into reach in terms of energy efficiency, clean energy, new agricultural practices, and other paths to help seize opportunities in addressing the climate challenge. It is valuable because this is not static — new fruit will grow. As we move forward, new fruit will bud — at all three levels.  This is a dynamic picture of how we can create a sustainable harvest of opportunities for sustainability in the years and decades ahead.