Sheeran agrees. Failure at Copenhagen means technical change continues, albeit in fits and starts. It will remain confined mostly in the developed world, continuing the global technological divide.
It also likely won't force the breakthroughs that can bring the steep emissions cuts necessary to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at 350 parts per million - a threshold the globe passed in 1987 and that is seen simultaneously as impossible to reach yet crucial to maintain to avoid the worst climatic effects.
"The faster we can get a price signal the faster we can get across that the era of carbon emissions is coming to an end," she said.
A taste of that new era can found out here on the Colorado prairie, where Weld County Road 4 has been renamed New Energy Drive.
Right now it's the taste of dust. Vestas' two plants are going up faster than Weld and Adams counties can pave the roads to the site, and truck traffic combined with winds whipped the grit across the landscape on a recent autumn afternoon.
But soon it will be the taste of money, or so city leaders hope.
Vestas is bringing 2,000 jobs to the region, and Brighton civic leaders anticipate the creation of another 4,000 as the plant draws ancillary suppliers.
The city spent $40 million in infrastructure improvements last year alone, including $8 million delivering sewage, water, utilities and other upgrades to the Vestas site.
Raymond Gonzales, president of the city's Economic Development Corporation, grew up in Brighton before leaving for Washington, D.C., and a stint in Albuquerque as then-Gov. Bill Richardson's labor secretary.
He remembers when Brighton was a farm town with nothing but a K-Mart distribution center on its outskirts. That's still there, except now it is landlocked by neighborhoods and shopping centers. The city is booming, having evolved from farms to a bedroom community to a live/work place of its own. It has a new hospital, new City Hall, new $5.5 million library. The old Armory re-opened last month as an arts center, the first time Brighton has had such a center since the opera house burned on July 25, 1955.
"Having a federal framework is critical to the success of this," Gonzales said. "Federal policy, state policy has to be in favor of attracting these kinds of investments."
Colorado wants that economy and has put the state policy in place, said James Martin, executive director of Colorado's Department of Public Health and the Environment. Federal and international policies will eventually follow. But in the meantime, he added, there's plenty of work for states and local governments to do.
"I don't think you'll see any retrenchment in Colorado" if federal or international climate mitigation efforts collapse, he said. "These are very large markets that will exist no matter what."
"Copenhagen is tremendously important for a host of reasons," he added. "But our commitment to renewable energy and natural gas are independent of the climate debate in many respects."
"You'll see that across the country," he said. "As industry leaders break out of the pack and demonstrate it can be done, everybody follows."
"It's a new paradigm, but it's a fairly painless paradigm shift."
This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
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12 Comments
Add CommentPutting a "value" on carbon is a euphemism for raising taxes under the banner of environmentalism. Interesting how no one sees fit to address the issue of how much extra (coal gererated) energy will be necessary to sequester the car bon dioxide. The true believers in global warming who oppose nuclear energy are simply fools or hypocrites The waste issue is a red herring; the solution exists for all except those for whom no solution will ever be acceptable. And for land transportation the answer is natural gas at least until we get to hydrogen which will be produceded with nuclear generated electrical energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs usual nuclear power is not even mentioned here but coal gets top billing. Of course when looking at Scientific American's full page ads from Chevron and Shell it's easy to understand why.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat coal sequestered or not is included with "renewables" is an obscenity. The product kills and sickens hundreds of millions of people every year with its radioactive toxic emissions and yet its "green"?
A large scale conversion to nuclear power is the only possible answer to our less than ten years away civilization ending peak oil and climate crisis. Mass produced nukes are predicted to cost under $1 billion a gigawatt. Renewables start at ten times that and are too undependable to be of any use.
America could do its part with a $2.5 trillion nominal investment in nuclear power brought in over a few years and be paid for by weaning itself off the $1 trillion spent annually on fossil fuels. A payback period of less than three years is a damn good investment in anybody's book
Fortunately for Canada and Mexico, our political system is hopelessly grid locked and corrupted by Big Oil and our energy structure like our medical system is run almost 100% by grossly inefficient private companies. That structure along with the "renewable" biased Nuclear Rejection Commission and corrupt and litigious legal system, will likely quadruple American nuclear costs compared to our neighbors.
Instead of just the 150 or so highly sophisticated Atomic Energy Canada Ltd Candu ACR-1000 nukes, Canada would need to wean itself of fossils, it could supply America's needs as well. It could rim the border with an additional massive Canadian employment boosting 2500 mass produced reactors and make $trillions selling the US nuke power at premium rates, making publicly owned AECL, the world leader in nuclear power, and generating a huge high paying job producing Canadian industry.
Canadians and Mexicans must love this American new age "renewable" religion.
Even if it should turn out that the human contribution to global warming is insignificant, the shift to regionally produced renewables would reduce dependency on oil imports from the middle east and therefore ease tensions around the world. This in turn would also reduce the need for huge military costs and stupid wars (I'll mention no names). All by itself this would be reason enough to go ahead full steam with the shift, AND, by the way, global warming is almost certainly caused by us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would really like to see the EPA-OBD II Annual Vehicle Emissions Inspection Law closely examined and changed.As it stands right now, it is entirely possible for any Gasoline powered Vehicle from 1996 to the present to fail it's Emissions Inspection, for not emitting enough polluting Exhaust Emissions ! All such Vehicles have on board Oxygen [O2] Exhaust Sensors.These O2 Sensors are set up to detect a level of polluting Exhaust Emissions that would indicate that Gasoline is being consumed by an Engine at 14.7 parts of Air to 1 part of Fuel.If there is a low level of Oxygen, and a high level of Pollution, a Vehicle will fail it's Emissions Inspection as well it should.But Gasoline can be safely vaporized into a mixture that is 100 parts of Air to 1 part of Fuel.With this, even the largest SUV could easily get 50 + MPG and emit a fraction of the Emissions of a conventional 14.7/1 Fuel System, with an increase in Power, and much longer Engine life.I'm not the first to figure this out.Far from it ! For proof, do a search on [the late] Tom Ogle, and Charles Nelson Pogue.Then, go to http://energy21.freeservers.com/bookrep.html and scan down the page to just before the update.But even if it is not to be believed that Fuel Vaporization is entirely possible, it's illegal to even attempt to do so with any Vehicle from 1996 to the present.O2 Sensors are set up to detect that Fuel is being consumed at 14.7/1. A mixture of 100 / 1 will not emit enough Polluting Exhaust Emissions to register on O2 Sensors.When such a Vehicle is connected to an OBD II Emissions Inspection Analyzer, an O2 Sensor Failure Code will be generated, which will result in a failed Emissions Inspection.O2 Sensor Exemptions are permitted for Vehicles that have been legally converted to operate on Natural Gas, Propane, or Hydrogen, and are Registered as such.But not for vaporized Gasoline.Thus, it is entirely possible under this EPA-OBD II Vehicle Emissions Inspection Law for any Gasoline powered Vehicle from 1996 to the present to fail it's Emissions Test for not emitting enough polluting Exhaust Emissions ! As long as this insane 14.7/1 Law that only benefits Big Oil remains in effect, the only way to make Vehicles more "efficient" will be to make them lighter, and smaller.This has got to change ! I have asked the Question many times ; "Why is it illegal for any Gasoline powered Vehicle from 1996 to the present to emit too little polluting Exhaust Emissions"? So far, not one Big Oil Executive, Politician, or Concerned Environmentalist can, or will answer the Question.Those that have bothered to reply can't seem to come up with an Answer either.Can you ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is why I support a carbon tax (also because cap and trade is a farce). If we tax all carbon containing energy sources like coal, oil and natural gas then we can easily get a handle on this quick. We know how much carbon is in each of these materials and therefore, we would not need to rely on self-reporting. We give tax rebates to those companies who sequester their carbon or otherwise do not release it into the atmosphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, this will disproportionately affect the poor, as the price for pretty much everything will increase. However, if you take half of the taxes collected and use them to give everyone a tax rebate, that will offset the economic impact. Luckily, the rich use more energy than the poor, so the end result is that those using more than the national average will be the ones paying for it.
You then take the other half of the taxes collected and use them to give rebates and incentives to install renewable energy solutions. Not only in the corporate sector, but also in the small private sector so that home owners can also benefit from installing their own renewable energy systems.
The last step is simple, you tax carbon a certain percentage and increase that tax by the same percentage every year. If it were just 5% that leave gas increasing in price by 20 cents a year. Use of carbon containing materials will slowly become less and less profitable and their use will be curtailed while feeding the alternative solution.
ILAN : Nuclear energy only represents 6% of world energy supplies. At current rates, uranium ressources will dry up in 70 years. Nuclear power stations are only stable at low regimes, so coal, oil and gas power sources are needed to follow demand variations. So exit the 'nuclear low carbon' argument. Moreover 'retreating' nuclear wastes does very little to reduce their toxicity, and surgenerators have proved to be unstable in operation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have said it before elsewhere, and will say it again here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthere are only TWO alternative energy approaches that can serve humanities' power needs and bring our global warming issues under control. these are space-based solar power and nuclear fusion. anything else is a poor excuse for a buy-time stopgap measure.
Nathaniel:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"This is why I support a carbon tax (also because cap and trade is a farce)."
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Yep.....cap and trade certainly is a farce, and I also support a carbon tax so that we finally give carbon a value. Rewarding those that limit their carbon emissions or use newer technology to sequester or turn it into biofuel, while taxing those that refuse to limit their carbon emissions, will be much better than letting unscrupulous traders make money on both sides of the equation.
It's part of a $1 billion investment by the company [Vestas]in the United States, what Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter touts as a "new energy economy."
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I firmly believe that our CO governor is on the right track, promoting a renewable energy economy that reduces fossil fuel use and importation, provides "liveable wage" jobs here in America, and harnesses clean and green energy with free fuel and no emissions.
The solution to human-made problems is to reduce the number of humans on the planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe needn't worry about this happening through any rational or humane turn of events. Humans, as a collective, are way, way, way too stupid to manage any sort of real care for anyone but themselves and their immediate family and friends.
In the third world.. we have people who live in environments that used to support a smaller population.... and where infant and child mortality rates are-or-were high.... and so cultures have developed where profligate breeding is seen as a social benefit.
The only ways for the population to be reduced, in the real world.. by human action... is via warfare ( a minor population control) or.... by poisoning ourselves with waste and pollution... or by police state activity (per China).. that is bound to be corrupted in about no-time.
The only truly "fair" and ethical way for the human race to be reduced to manageable levels is by way of plagues and diseases that strike in an "equal opportunity" way.
We know that long latency period diseases can develop... per AIDS..... and we know that intensely virulent diseases can develop that kill in days.
The large predators.. lions and tigers and bears.... are no problem for the human race to control. The itty-bitty predators.. the "germs"... will eventually evolve a strain of long-latency-period, virulent "predator" that gets spread around widely before it starts wiping out the population.
With as much "human food" on the hoof in this world... it is about guaranteed a predator will evolve to eat it.
Of course you are right, eco-steve - depending how to look at the problem(s). Nuclear power, windmills, solar-power, oil, coal, water-power etc, none of these provides a solution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot alone. Only a combination can do it. So the question is not if we should put our money here or there but the question is instead: which mix of energy is our goal for the nearest future? For a longer period of time? There is a possibility that no mix is acceptable why restrictions is a must then.
Just to prevent misunderstanding: I am not in favour of any AGW-theory (but I am convinced of global warming)
Sounds simple, but not as easy as 123..othwerwise governments would have implemented your system already, wouldn't they? Keep on trying to better the world with your thoughts, PEACE! Stv
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