Atkinson: It’s global warming, not American warming

Listening to climate activists, you’d be forgiven for concluding greenhouse gas emissions are like acid rain: a domestic problem that U.S. legislation can solve. In their view, America must do its part for the global cause by radically slashing its own emissions.

As NOAA’s Climate.gov has stated, “Anticipated increases in greenhouse gas emissions from China and other countries don’t let Americans off the hook for reducing emissions. … Any reduction in emissions helps minimize future temperature increases.”

The truth is that even if it were possible to radically slash U.S. emissions with today’s technologies — which it is not because they aren’t adequate or cost-effective in many industries — it still would do little to curb global warming because the United States accounts for just 13.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Because global energy use will grow between 16% and 52% by 2050, even if the United States could waive a magic wand to reach the vaunted target of “net zero,” global emissions would still grow.

Nonetheless, the prevailing wisdom suggests we should commit to reaching net zero with current technologies because it will be achievable if we layer on more subsidies, mandates and moral pressure.

The United States is not alone in this sentiment. After last year’s COP28 meeting in Dubai, the United Nations announced an agreement that it heralded as “the beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era. Participating nations agreed to “take actions toward achieving, at a global scale, a tripling of renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency improvements by 2030.” U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell closed the proceedings, saying triumphantly, “Now all governments and businesses need to turn these pledges into real-economy outcomes, without delay.”

Oh, right, that’s all. This was akin to taking seriously someone’s New Year’s resolution to exercise more and stop eating too much. And we are about to hear another refrain of this same old song as participating nations reconvene for COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

As millions of people tell themselves every new year that exercising will be more fun than sitting on the couch, and salads will taste better than pizza, global climate elites keep telling themselves and us that we have all the clean energy technology we need to address climate change at no appreciable net cost. So, like a Nike commercial, they tell us to “just do it.”

If exercise is so fun, and salads are so tasty, then why aren’t we already doing it? Perhaps because, with current clean energy technology, it would cost a whopping $275 trillion for the world to reach net zero. Hey, India and Zimbabwe, can you kick in a few trillion to help out? I didn’t think so.

That part of the narrative isn’t allowed to be spoken too loudly, though. In fact, when former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy was serving as the Biden administration’s climate tsar, she actually called for tech platforms to censor anyone who said we don’t have all the technology we need and, therefore, net zero will cost lots of money.

McCarthy’s comment echoed the convictions of a white paper the White House published in the run-up to COP26 asserting that the administration’s climate strategy would produce a net economic benefit by 2050. It cited 11 studies supporting that conclusion. There was only one problem: The studies assumed the costs of clean energy would fall by half and subsidies would continue indefinitely. If both were true, then clean energy would cost consumers less than dirty energy. This is like saying we will pay you to exercise: See, it’s fun.

More recently, the Treasury Department claimed that the Inflation Adjustment Act “will yield cumulative global economic benefits from reduced greenhouse gas pollution of over $5 trillion from the present to 2050,” while costing taxpayers only between $800 billion and $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The reality is that the U.S. share of the global benefits will be $1.35 trillion while the net present value of spending up to $1.2 trillion (instead of investing it in income-producing assets) could come to $5.6 trillion.

So, instead of making hortatory statements that are more wish than reality, what should countries do to address climate change? First, they should fund clean energy research and development across a range of energy sources to spur innovations that can drive down the cost of clean energy and improve its performance relative to dirty energy. For a while, it looked like rich nations were ready to do exactly that. In conjunction with the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, 23 countries launched an initiative dubbed “Mission Innovation,” pledging to double their investments in clean energy research, development and demonstration as a share of their respective economies by 2020. Yet, by 2022, only one had met that goal (the United Kingdom), while six had actually cut their spending. Even in the United States, which invests more than any other nation in clean energy RD&D, that investment accounts for only 6% of the federal energy budget.

So, why has there not been an open and honest discussion about the costs and challenges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? One reason is that the consensus opinion holds that climate change is an existential crisis and every moment counts. We must act now; we don’t have time to wait for new research to produce breakthrough innovations. The reality is that mandating, subsidizing and hectoring everyone to use today’s clean energy options won’t work, especially in low-income countries that cannot afford to pay more for the “luxury” of clean energy.

All this obfuscation would be merely disconcerting if the issue wasn’t so serious. Rich nations can no longer afford to get it so wrong when it comes to climate, either. It’s time to recognize that the climate crisis can only be solved with innovation, and that requires governments to make the RD&D investments that are necessary to make exercising fun and salads tasty. We need a real clean energy innovation agenda to drive down costs and boost performance.

Robert D. Atkinson is president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation/InsideSources.com