30 Years of Environmental Progress: Is It Time at Last to Be Optimistic?
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good
morning I’m Matthew ketti director of
domestic policy here at the American
Enterprise Institute and it’s my
pleasure to welcome you all to this
event 30 years of environmental progress
is it time at last to be
optimistic in
1968 Paul and Anne erck published the
population bomb the book repurposed the
ideas of 18th century Economist Thomas
malus to argue that population growth
would soon outpace agricultural growth
leading to widespread famine and other
social and ecological crisis
these ideas took hold of the American
Environmental movement which adopted a
broadly pessimistic view of our planet’s
future the erck predictions did not come
to pass but alarmism over the effect of
population growth on the environment as
well as resource scarcity endures among
many on the left in recent years the
notion that Americans should stop having
children to protect the environment has
been promoted widely by academics
journalists and other public figures
according to analysts at Morgan Stanley
the movement to not have children owing
to fears over climate change is growing
and impacting fertility rates quicker
than any preceding Trend in the field of
fertility
decline despite these anxieties
available data on environmental Trends
makes it clear that we’ve made enormous
progress in environmental issues over
the last 30 years both within the United
States and around the
world we are here this Earth Day then to
explore what that progress has looked
like how Environ mental data should
shape future public policy decisions and
why we and ask and answer why we should
be optimistic about America’s
environmental future our speakers this
morning are Steph F Hayward and Roger
pilki Jr from 2002 to 20 2012 Stephen
was a fellow here at AEI where he
authored an annual report on
environmental Trends and controversies
titled the index of leading
environmental indicators the index
analyzed and summarized Overlook
government data on the environment most
of which demonstrated substantial
environmental progress over the last
generation in 2010 Steven published mere
environmentalism a Biblical perspective
on humans and the natural world which
explored the philosophical
presuppositions of the modern
environmentalist movement and this
morning’s discussion will expand on many
of Steven’s themes and evidence uh
contained in that work today Steven
Hayward is a resident scholar at the
University of California Berkeley’s
Institute of government studies and a
fellow of the law and public policy
program at breley law he’s also a
professor at Pepperdine University a
popular blogger at powerlineblog.com
he’s written a number of books on the
history of the American conservative
movement of particular interest to me
including the two volume age of Reagan
excellent book and another excellent
book patriotism is not enough Harry jafa
Walter Burns and the arguments that
reshaped American conservatism Roger py
Jr meanwhile is a non-resident senior
fellow here at Ai and a professor in the
College of artarts and Sciences at the
University of Colorado Boulder his work
explores Science and Technology policy
with a particular focus on energy and
climate and the politicization of
science he writes the popular substack
the honest broker which we are happy to
host on the AI homepage these days in
addition to the substack platform and is
the author of several books including
the rightful place of science disasters
and climate change and the climate fix
what scientists and politicians won’t
tell you about global warming
Steven Hayward will begin this morning
with a presentation on leading
environmental indicators Roger will then
offer some
remarks on climate change in particular
which tends to overshadow other
environmental issues in public discourse
and afterwards Stephen and Roger will
discuss what we have learned about the
environment in recent years and how the
environmental movement should proceed
we’ll then open the floor to audience
Q&A if you’re watching online and I know
many of you are please submit any
questions you may have to guide Denton
ai.org that is Guy guy. Denton d n t n
ai.org or send a question via X Twitter
using hash environmental progress and
with that please join me in welcoming
Stephen F hward back to
AI the first one going
there oh oh green button there it is
green button Happ happy Earth Day
everybody uh it uh it used to be a big
deal you know there often was a lot of
media coverage for it and a lot of times
significant public events a big rally
out here on the mall or festivals in
American cities on college campuses and
now it passes kind of quietly and
therein I think lies a tale although
it’s a tale with a very large asterisk
which I’ll come to at the very end uh
and you may be able to guess about it
but I’ll just leave it at that uh if you
and my point is is that uh we now have
arrived at a moment for environmental
optimism broadly speaking not just in
the United States and Wealthy industrial
countries but increasingly around the
world I think uh if you cast your mind
back to you know 35 40 years ago uh you
may remember every January the world
watch Institute would put out their
state of the World Report uh and it
always got a lot of press uh and of
course it was all you Lester Brown was
the chief instigator of this and he was
one of the prominent figures of
environmentalism in the 70s and ‘ 80s
into the ’90s and this is just one
report of many you could point to but it
got a lot of press and it was always
everything’s terrible uh the world is
doomed is very malthusian uh in its
Outlook uh and this was reflected in
public opinion uh back in those days the
Worland group dick Worland was Ronald
Reagan’s pollster used to do an annual
poll every other year on the environment
and found that uh you know large
majorities of Americans thought
Environmental Quality in America was
getting worse uh the rer people which
also that the rer pole doesn’t exist
anymore there it is um uh I had the
question the next 10 years will be the
last decade what this you know we only
have 10 years left to do something is a
been a Trope of environmental discourse
since the first Earth Day in
1970 54 years ago and we’re still here
with 10year countdowns uh so it it
clearly was reflected uh in uh public
Consciousness and and of course everyone
knows the headlines I mean these are
some old ones but everyone remembers all
the headlines about everything’s
terrible and we’re all going to uh we’re
all going to
die one of the first markers I think of
the beginning of a slow change can be
traced back to or or like I like to
start with this this is an ad from The
New York Times from David Brower also
one of the great figures of
environmentalism in the six from the ‘
50s really to the ’90s he was the
longtime head of the sier club when it
changed from being a hiking and concer
conservation organization to a
politically active organization and this
was a full page ad in the New York Times
and you can see the headline economics
is a form of brain damage this is only
half the ad by the way it was a full
page which I think even then cost
$50,000 to place and what it said was it
was a letter to the Clinton
Administration please please don’t use
this cost benefit analysis that the
Reagan Administration and the Bush
Administration have used for all these
years to stop sensible environmental
regulation and not only did the Clinton
administration not take that advice and
kept using the cost benefit formulas
that had developed during the Reagan
years but when Barack Obama came into
office in 2009 uh he installed as head
of the of regulatory analysis at to OMB
uh a unit that actually had been started
by ai’s previous president Chris De Muth
way back in the Reagan years he
appointed Cass sunstein to run that
operation and and Cass sunstein is you
know really smart Center left thinker
but devoted to the idea that cost
benefit analysis makes good sense there
was some grumbling from environmental
groups about that appointment but uh it
got nowhere and then the idea of cost
benefit analysis went
mainstream in particular 2009 uh had
Richard ravez uh and his co-author
William Livermore and then they sort of
you know Center left or conventional
environmental thinkers I think they
published a very serious book saying
I’ll paraphrase it this way let’s not
leave cost benefit analysis to those
libertarian right-wing Fanatics we ought
to embrace it too because it makes good
sense and so the point is is I don’t
think very many environmentalists today
would use that slogan environmentalism
is a form of brain damage um
environmental economics is now pretty
mainstream even if often poorly done I’m
tempted to just use that old Dr Johnson
line that uh it’s not that it’s done
well like uh you know women preaching or
dogs standing on their hind legs if you
know that famous old quote uh from
Samuel Johnson um now it was around that
time in the early 990s that I woke up
one day and saw that William Bennett had
made this great public sensation with
his index of leading cultural indicators
it was about 35 pages long uh simple
charts and graphs of Time series about
all kinds of bad stuff happening it was
teenage pregnancy and crime rates and
test scores and Drug dependency and
Welfare
dependency and Russ limbo picked up on
it and eventually became a book but it
was this huge sensation and that’s when
the light bulb went off in my head
knowing a bit about air quality
statistics in California where I grew up
with really bad smog in La um I got to
thinking you know the same kind of
treatment in the US would show Mostly
Improvement not on everything but on a
lot of big things uh and so I thought
I’m just going to copy that format um
and then for several years as Matt
mentioned I put out an annual report it
VAR between 50 and 70 Pages you wanted
to keep it short enough that someone
could actually get through it but have
enough substance to it to actually say
something uh and uh it it did very well
with the media I’ll give a couple of
examples but it never was quite the
sensation of Bill Bennett’s report
because as I put it once to Bill his
report was about sex drugs and rock and
roll and mine was about polychlorinated
by fennels who do you think’s going to
get more press attention right uh but it
was about that same time I wasn’t the
only person thinking this I remember in
1995 Greg Easterbrook came out with his
monumentally large book a moment on the
earth and the subtitle uh is the coming
age of environmental
optimism and I think Greg was just 15
years too early his book got Savaged by
environmentalists for some reason the
environmental defense fund uh took a
such a disliking to it that they set up
an early website this was still the
early days of the internet nitpicking
you know factual claims and and uh
statistics that could be contested an
error here and there uh but the sweeping
point was the entire book should be
discredited uh because Easter Brook had
written in the book uh environmental
commentary is so fog Bound in woe that
few people realize measurable
improvements have been made in almost
every area he just couldn’t say that
then or not without attracting
widespread scorn The Economist magazine
at the time observed that suggesting the
environment as a cause for optimism is
beyond the pale of respectable
discourse well within a few years you
began to see the media taking notice I
remember in 2000 after I talked to the
editorial board at USA Today they talked
about hidden environmental gains they
were hidden in plain sight just you need
to look up the data uh but of course you
know USA today’s format was always to
have a point Counterpoint so Fred crup
showed up to say empty pleasure yeah
some things improve but things are still
terrible uh a lot of environmentalists
can’t take yes for an
answer um now the other thing at the
time that I made a not really a stink
about but you know the United States
still does not have a bureau of
environmental statistics to go along
with the Bureau of Justice statistics
the Bureau of Labor Statistics the
Bureau of Education
statistics uh meanwhile almost all of
our European peer Nations have a bureau
of environmental statistics and produce
uh annual reports on environmental
Trends and conditions in their countries
and we haven’t that did finally change
with the EPA around
2006 they now have on their website that
of course it’s huge and sprawling and
it’s hard to find things but they have a
report on the environment that um pulls
together the data on environmental
problems not just the ones that are
under EPA jurisdiction but from other uh
cabinet agencies and uh other regulatory
agencies in the government and you know
One-Stop shopping and nowadays you can
download the data sets in Excel if you
want to analyze them I mean when I first
started out 30 years ago I had to do it
the oldfashioned way I had to go to the
EPA region 9 library in San Francisco
and look up printed reports and enter
the numbers in an extel spreadsheet the
oldfashioned way by hand so it took a
long time but now all the data is
available uh for anyone uh to uh look at
um so that’s a step forward but we still
don’t have a bureau of environmental
statistics or any consistent reporting
uh
format tell a little story about that uh
I team up for several years uh in the
auts with Paul portney the longtime
president of resources for the future
recommending that we ought to have a
bureau of environmental statistics and
we testify a couple times before the
some house committee on government
Administration and environmentalists
would show up to oppose the
idea and you know I can be cynical about
it uh but one one of the persons who
spoke against it one day said well we we
don’t trust the Bush Administration to
do it fairly and straightforwardly
which I thought odd because it was the
bush om that had put out a big thick
report about how massive the health
benefits of the Clean Air Act were I
think they may have overestimated them
but apparently this was lost on
environmentalists who thought you
couldn’t trust the the bush om under
John Graham who was always a fairly
tough on regulatory analysis person
reaching that conclusion but that’s
where we
are um the EPA started putting out this
lovely chart every year which could be
summarized Under The Heading of
decoupling showing the that you can have
lots of economic growth population
growth vehicle miles traveled and
falling conventional air pollution and
here in the last few years falling
carbon dioxide emissions at the same
time I’ll come back to that point
because I think it’s an important one uh
today I’m just going to go very quickly
over a very few highlights uh uh uh
today uh we see that the air pollution
the conventional six main air pollution
pollutants of the Clean Air Act era uh
have all Fallen well below the national
standards which we keep lowering every
so often um and now it’s not uniform of
course there are some stubborn Pockets
like a couple of parts of Los Angeles
um but when I was a kid growing up in
the 70s in the LA area uh LA and I’m out
in San Gabriel Valley two miles from the
mountains most of which I could never
see most of the year today you can see
them all the time uh but in those days
uh we violated the old 1hour ozone
standard about 200 100 days a year and
most of the LA Bas and now doesn’t
violate the old one hour standard even
one day a year again except with a
couple of those pockets of Riverside San
berardino and Santa carita Valley but
even on their worst days uh their peak
level of ozone the worst of them is uh
uh is less than half of what an average
day was in Los Angeles in the
1970s and a lot of this is the story of
automobiles well here’s total Vol
organic compounds that’s one of the
precursors to O Zone and you know that’s
the decline curve from 1970 to now uh I
like to point out that uh it’s really an
automobile story I like to say the real
heroes of the Clean Air Act are not so
much environmental lawyers and judges or
even EPA issuing mandates those all play
a role uh but the real heroes were the
engineers who wore pocket protectors who
figured out how to redesign our entire
combustion systems for autos and lots of
other things uh the same story is true
of nitrogen oxide emissions both totally
and from
automobiles uh and then uh okay let’s
pause there I I can say a lot about the
um too fi I could say a lot more about
the whole uh conventional air pollution
story and power plants and coal and all
the rest of that but it is true that not
everything has improved or things that
have improved have stalled out uh for a
long time from the ‘ 50s to 7s we were
losing a lot of wetlands we reversed
that by uh the beginning of the new
century and then in the last few years
we sort of backsliding a little bit and
of course not all wetlands are created
equal and so you know the sort of
subcategories are important as they are
in so many things um another area where
we have made no progress at all would be
hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico which
really is a story of runoff from the
huge Mississippi River
Basin here you can implicate conflicting
environmental policies we’d like to get
the um uh area of hypoxia and nutrient
rth down but we’re also saying let’s
have a ton of corn ethanol which is
exactly the wrong thing to do if you’re
really trying to control a a runoff in
the Mississippi Basin uh I’ve got some
old data showing that the general trend
of nitrate loadings has been going up a
lot of that very choppy variation really
does depend on how much rainfall there
is in a year in the Mississippi Basin a
light rainfall year will have less a
heavy rain fall year will have more but
nonetheless we’re not having a lot of
great progress there I’m going to skip
over that that just shows you that’s our
Trends have been flat on um nitrogen
loadings into the Gulf other areas have
shown better uh performance like the
Chesapeake Bay nearby here Long Island
Sound a Puget Sound I think although I
haven’t looked at Puget Sound data for
quite a long time now
um let’s see page two
here another interesting effort to do
serious environmental analysis happened
in 2006 when the hind Center uh did the
state of the nation’s ecosystems this
was an extraordinary project involving
about over a hundred scientists of
various Specialties and of course one
problem is what’s an ecosystem they had
worked very hard to Define different
kinds of ecosystems in different scales
an ecosystem can be as small as a petri
dish or as large as the whole country uh
and they developed about 120 indicators
of ecosystem condition and what they
found was they only had decent data for
about
half others there was some data but gaps
and so they could only draw conclusions
about a few of the different uh uh
ecosystem conditions they thought were
important uh and of that you know about
25% of them showed Improvement others
just too much uncertainty but above all
the pro the uh the process of doing this
took several years we actually hosted
Robin Ali the project direct director
for this project here at AI when this
report came out along with Tom Lovejoy
from Princeton and some of the other
leaders of it it was so labor intensive
that they didn’t keep the project up
unfortunately but it’s the kind of
intensive investigation you’ve seen a
lot more of as Environmental Studies has
matured in the last 20 30
years
um other people are starting to get into
the game and I think maybe the Turning
Point toward environmental optimism
started with bjor Lor’s book in 2000
2000 I think it came out
2001 and of course it was very
controversial and you may remember that
some Danish scientific committee
formerly charged lomborg with scientific
dishonesty and I read the report and I
couldn’t find a single factual claim
disputed although there were many
factual claims in the book you could
dispute or Hasty conclusions and so
forth and they ended up retracting that
finding but that shows you how
politicized the matter still was uh but
that was just the beginning by 2005 we
have Jack Hollander
of a Meritus physicist from UC Berkeley
who described to me by the way that he
got in the environment back in his days
as a Bobby Kennedy liberal this began to
be a sign that environmental thought was
now environmental optimism was not only
growing but was more bipartisan it
wasn’t limited to contrarians like
Julian Simon or AI Ben wattenberg who
used to talk a lot about environmental
progress during his many years here uh
the one that especially jumped out of me
was Seymour G uh not very well-known
person so a professor of Public Health
at the University of Pittsburgh and he
told the story of how he was at a
conference one day of Public Health
experts and a speaker said well of
course you know air pollution is falling
almost everywhere and he said we all
looked around each other none of us had
ever heard this we didn’t believe it uh
we’d never seen it reported anywhere and
that’s when he decided Well I’m going to
look into this and similar uh uh um um
similar Trends and that’s where he came
out with the surprising look at the real
state of our planet um and we had
Seymour here at AI to talk about this
book because whenever a book like this
came out from some unexpected quarter I
thought that person needs some attention
um and
then I think other notable figures Hans
rosling who was a good friend the late
Hans rosling he died a few years ago too
early good friend of Nick abat here um
and uh he’s a demographer covers a lot
of the Waterfront but environment was
one of the issues he liked to talk about
and if you’ve never ever seen his Gap
minder website not just his but he was
one of the designers of Gap minder it’s
this wonderfully interactive site where
you can plug in from any databases for
individual countries or uh and and
countless variables and then generate
these really wonderful animated graphics
whenever I teach the subject I make
students learn how to use Gap minder and
do various research projects I think
it’s a fabulous uh
resource um Hannah Richie uh is just out
with his brand new book I haven’t gotten
into it yet not the end of the
world uh and you know a this is the kind
of optimism that as you know the
economist said at the time of Greg
easterbrook’s book was just simply not
allowed and now you see more and more
quote unquote mainstream books like this
Hannah is part of this terrific project
out of Oxford run by Max Roser called
our world in data if you don’t know it
or haven’t seen it you absolutely must
it does a whole lot of things too but it
does environmental issues on a global
scale extremely well
uh there’s also down the street from us
our friends at the KO Institute have
their project on human progress it again
covers the entire Waterfront but energy
environment is prominent among them and
then I want to mention uh uh Ted Nord
house and Michael selberg’s book from
almost 20 years ago a breakthrough and
Ted’s going to be here tonight actually
along with Roger to talk about another
aspect of the climate change story uh
but this began uh a self-conscious New
Movement called ecomodernism
and to make a long story short look up
ecomodernist Manifesto online it is
explicitly anti-
malthusian explicitly Pro
technology uh and optimistic about the
future uh and I think it’s one of the
something I you I never would have
expected this even 10 years ago uh with
a body of serious opinion behind it
mentioned one other book that I think is
a turning point Matt mentioned you know
the population bomb in 1968 which
curiously corresponded with the peak of
fertility rates around the world and
that’s when they started falling an
interesting bit of timing for that
famous book Matthew Connelly a historian
at Columbia University published this
book around 2010 I think and it is a
lacerating criticism not just of sort of
the erck outlook on population but
especially he’s very critical of in
particular the uh Planned Parenthood
International and their birth control
efforts around the world which were
often quite coercive and even in some
cases violent uh and you can’t read that
book without thinking and the title
really has it right a fatal
misconception this is wrongly thought
about again an unthinkable book from
Harvard University press uh as recently
maybe as 1990 uh but there you have
it finally the old malthusianism does
Die Hard there is a reaction has grown
to the EC modernists and there’s now a
self style degrowth movement and I
haven’t quite got my hands around it
because when you ask some of the people
on Twitter which is where we conduct all
important conversations these days right
uh what they mean by D growth they’ll
it’s often confusing and contradictory
they’ll say we don’t actually mean
negative growth just some different kind
of growth you know it’s uh you know
we’re back to sustainable development
which was the big phrase 20 some years
ago but kind of fallen out of fashion
because it was so
watery uh but uh so that going to go on
they never quite go away uh the way I
put it is uh the old malthusian
environmentalists are like people who’ve
been to alcoholics who’ve been to a
12-step program they determin to get
sober and abandon malus and then they
walk by a well-lit malthusian Tavern and
go on a bender so that’s always going to
be around so where are we now with
public opinion you know I began showing
you that 30 years ago had majorities of
Americans thinking conditions were
getting
worse uh and that we were running out of
time here’s the latest series from
Gallop uh Gallup by the way more and
more pollsters aren’t even asking about
the environment Much Anymore um it used
to be that people who do the exit pole
Consortium for elections you know they
offer you seven or eight issues you know
the economy crime terrorism whatever
they used to ask about is the
environment one of your top two issues I
think they quit Carlin Bowman may
remember I think they quit asking that
question after 2002 because the number
of Voters who selected the environment
as a top two issue is below 2% in other
words below the margin of error uh uh
but this one is kind of fun because what
you’ll see is uh you know large
majorities here at the green line and we
think things are getting worse and then
suddenly in 2009 that Gap Narrows and
the number of people who think the
environment is getting better takes a
conspicuous
jump ah Barack Obama was elected and I
hate to be cynical about it but people
apparently took literally that grandiose
pronouncement that this will be the
moment history records when the sea Lev
sto Rising just because we elected
him um okay so I I think it’s not news
that a partisan division on the
environment has opened up and been
around for a very long time but oops I
didn’t want to do that just yet um I
want the I want the laser that one so it
stayed that way through the Obama years
bounces up a little when Trump comes in
and very ostentatiously takes us out of
the Paris climate Accord and so forth uh
and then Joe Biden arrives here three
years ago and I keep doing that wrong
and you’ll see that the uh um the the
number of uh people goes down and Gallup
supposition in the latest poll is that
it you know it just replex the Democrat
Republican divide and Democrats and uh
you know people inclined toward the
environment are more suspicious when
there’s a Republican president and less
so when there’s a Democrat except then
you see this last little tale at the end
here
while Biden’s still in office what’s
going on here well Gallup speculates
looking at their cross tabs that that
increase you’re seeing there is actually
coming from
Republicans they don’t really explain
why and what but and I have a lot of
thoughts about what that actually means
and M not mean exactly what you think it
means but it is kind of interesting and
not expected and actually might be a
reason for optimism in the long term for
ways that would take me a while to
explain but what I want to do is get to
my asterisk the big asterisk of course
is climate
change
and my proposition is that climate
change has eaten environmentalism alive
and the reason I say that is if you
bring up any of the other problems that
deserve observation serious policy work
you know water quality of every kind a
loss of habitat area um you toxic
exposure and so forth uh what you often
hear is climate CH it doesn’t matter if
things have gotten better climate change
is going to stop all that and make
everything
worse and therefore the solution to
Conventional air pollution habitat
destruction Forest loss whatever is we
have to get rid of fossil fuels and you
know we have to solve if we solve
climate change will solve everything
else uh which seems quite wrong-headed
to me but to cover that part of the
Waterfront I want to defer now to Roger
Peli thank
you and I guess I’ll just sit down over
here I don’t know if we use the same one
or not we’ll see we’ll
see all right well good morning hello
everybody online um I’ll tell a quick
story about Steve it’s great to be here
with Steve and sit here a decade ago
about Steve was on spent a year at the
University of Colorado Boulder and I
think he had the latitude to choose what
department he sat in so he choose to sat
sit in my department Environmental
Studies Department I remember when it
was wrapping up his his year he told me
he said when I first came I was worried
that I’d come to an Environmental
Studies Department in Boulder Colorado
and it would be politics this politics
that politics this he said when I went
to the faculty meetings it was who gets
what office who has what teaching load
assignments and it was just boring and
yeah we’re academics we know how that
goes it’s not like that everywhere
anymore um so my talk is is is going to
be shorter narrower and deeper than
Steve’s uh I’m going to talk about
climate change first I want to show this
is me um marching in Earth Day uh parade
uh near as I can tell it’s like 1973 um
you can see from my smile I was an
environmental Optimist back then also
um all right so let me start with uh
John krey and um as everyone knows uh
John KY has been a longtime Advocate on
climate change and I’m going to posit
these two statements that he made just
two years apart almost to the day um he
said uh in 2021 current Curr we’re we’re
as we’re talking we are regrettably on
course to hit somewhere between 3 4° at
the current rate he’s talking about
projected global average temperature
rise to
2100 but then just two years later
obviously the same sort of speech um
there was a change made we’re currently
heading towards something like 2.4 or
2.5 degrees of warming on the planet
again to 2100 um for global average
temperature rise that’s a change of a
significant amount from 3 or 4 degrees
to 2.4 degre um and so it’d be fair to
ask you know what changed and let me say
all props to John kery um he’s
accurately reflecting the science here
when many people still have not um if
you ask Mr Cary what changed um he said
just recently we’re heading towards
about 2.5 degrees right now when I took
this job on we were headed towards four
degre well that’s not EX exactly correct
um and so what I want to do is tell you
why perspectives have changed like
reflected here by by Mr kry um I call it
the best kept secret in climate science
um everyone in and around climate
science knows everything I’m going to
tell you right now most people do
not all right this is a spaghetti
diagram and let me just take a moment to
explain it to you um these are carbon
dioxide emissions from burning fossil
fuel
and the black line here is history and
all of this spaghetti this colorful
spaghetti are projections that were
developed um really starting about 20
years ago for how the future might play
out under different scenarios climate
Science is based on scenarios of the
future um which are Super complicated
they have aspects of the economics of
population growth of energy consumption
energy production land use and on and on
um this figure shows about 12200
scenarios that were developed in the
literature um back then and obviously
the world um scientists cannot deal with
1200 scenarios we had to simplify so at
the time this is 2005 they said all
right let’s pick four scenarios and
that’ll be the focus of our research and
these have these names they’re called
rcps details aren’t so important but
they said at the time well let’s have a
high one we got to have a high one let’s
have a low one that’s the blue one down
there the 2.6 then they said let’s have
two in the middle they didn’t want one
in the middle because they said every ‘s
going to focus on that one um so let’s
have two in the middle and it turns out
at that
time this High one RCP 8.5 um for a lot
of reasons was designated business as
usual this is where the world is
heading you can see or maybe you can’t
see here’s the temperature rise of 2100
here it’s 3.2 to 5.4 deges C this is
where John KY got that 3 4° cel that he
was repeating again in
2021 so what has
changed all right so what I’m doing here
on this graph is I’ve taken um every one
of these spaghetti
scenarios and this is with my colleagues
Matt Burgess and uh at Colorado and
Justin Richie at British Columbia um
this is recently published for anybody
who wants a copy um it’s wonderful
reading um we took each of those
scenarios and we just plotted them on
this graph this is total fossil fuel
carbon dioxide emissions all added up to
2100 on the x-axis and then on the
vertical axis is temperature change to
2100 so as pretty much everyone
understands the increased carbon dioxide
your increased temperature um it’s not
exactly linear but it’s pretty darn
close so you have the extreme scenarios
out here the less extreme down here
consistent with the Paris
agreement the intergovernmental panel on
climate change in in its in its doing
its job it says um when we use emission
scenarios they have to be plausible they
have to be capable of occurring in the
real world so I use this green oval and
I drew a circle around all these because
these are the 205 to 2010 scenarios that
were developed because the ipcc put it
into their database we can conclude they
thought they were all plausible so what
I and my colleagues did is we said all
right a lot of time has passed since
2005 this was a couple years ago um we
know what has happened with emissions so
we can compare the real world to what
the emission scenarios
actually put forward the other thing we
can do is that the the energy system
modelers like the International Energy
agency and some of the fossil fuel
companies and the US Energy Information
agency they produce short-term energy
outlooks these are updated every year
not every couple decades like these
scenarios um and so they’re the best
view into what’s going to happen next
year the year after the next 5 years the
next 10 years and so we asked a question
of this big body of 1200 scenarios which
one survived the test of a reality and B
where we think we’re headed today rather
than
2005 here’s the
answer all of the
scenarios that survive the test of
reality and the test of near-term
projections um SI between 2 and
3° and in our study the plausible
scenarios were centered on 2.2 de uh
Celsius Changed by
2100 um this narrowing of expectations
is perfectly normal it happens in
research if you have long-term scenarios
as time goes on some of them will
survive and some of them will fall out
uh economists know this anyone who deals
with data and projections knows the
future is a difficult place to to
predict and it it doesn’t always evolve
as we
think so let me go back to the Spaghetti
diagram if we if we apply this test of
plausibility we find that these very
extreme scenarios um are implausible in
fact this business as usual RCP
8.5 is already
falsified and just to give you a sense
of how ridiculous it is it assumes that
the world is going to build something
like 30,000 new Coal Fired power plants
by
2100 there’s about 6,000 in the world
right now um sure some countries are
building more India and China in
particular but many countries are going
off of coal particularly in the European
Union um here in the United States where
we’re on track to be out of the coal
business in the early 2030s and so once
we look at these plausible
scenarios um based on where we sit today
the world looks a lot
different and let me say this is not a
unique view just to me and my colleagues
um we happen to be one of many
researchers around the world this is a
figure that’s put together uh by Zeke
housea um very helpfully and it’s in
time order um of publication you can’t
see it but it starts in 2019 goes to
2021 here’s our study this with this
gray bar between two and three degrees
and these uh different Publications have
different projections of temperature out
to 2100 assuming different policy paths
and so on but one of the things that you
can see is that 5° is way up here 4
degrees is here there’s no more studies
in there so when John krey was saying
that it looks like the world is heading
for something like 2.4 2.5 degrees by
2100 he was accurately reflecting the
state of scientific understandings now
now if you go to the major media if you
go to the Biden administration’s
projections on the costs of climate
change under the social cost of carbon
you’re going to find that old extreme
scenario RCP 8.5 dominates public
discussion so there is an enormous
dissonance out there the old outdated
scenario the climate apocalypse scenario
still has a firm hold on public
discourse it has a firm hold in the
media and it appears almost all the time
in policy uh J John krey is interesting
because he stands kind of alone out
there um among policy makers and
politicians
and accurately reflecting the
science the Ia came out in 2023 and I
I’m pretty sure this is where John car’s
2.4 degrees came from and you see it
slices right through all these studies
um this is the new scientific consensus
on climate
change I mentioned that everybody knows
about this so last summer in Reading
England uh about 50 of the world’s
scenario experts that create the
scenarios that inform the ipcc
they gathered at a workshop to create um
abstract art no they didn’t um they they
they gathered at the workshop to develop
the next generation of scenarios um and
this is a big problem for climate
research and climate policy because once
scenarios are created they last for 20
years and I can tell you the scenarios
that we create this year are going to be
out of date in a couple years um and so
there needs to be some rethinking we
need to be more like the the energy
system modelers and update scenarios
every year anyway they came up with uh a
proposal for a new set of scenarios they
took these extreme scenarios and they
put them in this this hatched uh
projection here they call it the
emissions World avoided um we could have
a debate whether it’s the world avoided
or were just plain wrong um what I did
is I took this this graphic and I tried
to turn it less into abstract art and
more into something consistent with what
I just showed you so up here we have
there’s that RCP 8.5 you can see between
four and 5° this is where we thought we
were headed this new abstract art set of
scenarios doesn’t even touch it doesn’t
come close to it the the the climate
science Community um is well aware of
this there is going to be a profound
Reckoning in public discourse and
discussions when the world
realizes that where we’re
headed is lower than what just a few
years ago was called a success story on
climate
change so let me just conclude and I
look forward to having a discussion with
everyone um climate change is real it is
a problem um but in recent years our
understandings of how future emissions
uh are going to evolve uh has changed
and the good news it’s become much less
extreme and that’s good news and we
should be able to comment on that good
news um while at the same time
recognizing there’s a lot of work left
to do uh here how you can find me for
any questions or comments and I look
forward to chatting with you thank
[Applause]
you do we want to go straight to
questions or I don’t I mean know what do
you want to do I don’t care you one I
mean let’s let’s go to questions they’ve
heard a lot from
us yeah see we’ve got some online
ones we let Mike handle the the mic
we got someone over here I think yeah
okay here we go guys’s got the mic G’s
got a mic working mic right okay my name
is Joe Freeman and I have two La
questions oh because I grew up in the
San Fernando Valley in the 50s oh yeah
when we burned trash in the backyard
right yes so question number one when
did LA stop being smogs Ville or at
least not as much of one as it was okay
and question number two has anyone done
any long range studies of long range
health effects on those of us who grew
up in smugs Ville yeah great question so
I mean the LA Story is a a a it didn’t
happen overnight it happened very slowly
uh I used to have the data memorized of
when things peaked which was the late
60s early 70s but things didn’t really
start dropping substantially till the
late ‘ 80s into the ’90s and then really
started going down fast by the year 2000
and since then um one of the things
about the Clean Air Act generally is
that uh it was it was well understood I
think as early as the 50s that Los
Angeles had a big problem with carbon
monoxide you at that time you know ozone
photochemical smog wasn’t that well
understood believe it or not and in some
small respects still isn’t that’s a long
story but uh but then once the Clean Air
Act passed we started monitoring the
whole country we were we were surprised
to discover that Milwaukee and other
places that were never as bad as La also
had elevated levels of carbon monoxide
okay
um there have been some studies that the
lanet did one on asthma in around
2002 that I I thought was kind of mixed
and there’s another study recently I
can’t remember the citation but um I
guess what I’d say is uh I mean I
certainly remember as a kid you couldn’t
play outside in the afternoon in the
summer CU your lungs would just burn and
hurt and I you know I grew up in a
wealthy suburb everybody had these
glorious swiming pools you couldn’t go
swimming cuz you you within 15 minutes
you would be gasping for breath and you
be was in pain right and uh uh and you
know I was a track athlete in the 70s
and I can’t believe they let us run know
it’s unbelievable uh to look back on
that now
um that’s a really I mean that’s an
intricate question I think that the uh
the there’s a range of opinion on that
I’ve seen a few studies thought that the
health effects were overestimated at
that were more resilient than we might
think it’s like people that quit smoking
their health
improves I’m I’m s of agnostic about
that there’s unquestionably health
benefits especially from getting lead
out of the air but that’s also a
national story um but uh I you know I
think we’re still waiting for long-term
data about LA from you know people our
age and also the younger cohort coming
up are they going to have lower
incidents of asthma and you know other
respiratory diseases and lifespans I
think we don’t know yet I’m convinced
the sign will be positive very strongly
though was it uh
Mark
Mark Mark Mills with the national Center
for Energy analytics uh gentlemen uh
would you speculate on on what form and
when the Reckoning will happen because I
think this is uh relevant to both of
your
views do you want to go first or yeah
sure I’ll be happy to you know this is
one of those where uh
um things change in underlying
scientific understandings and it can
take a really long time for that to
percolate um into the future so I I will
go back to the the the population bomb
that was mentioned a number of times you
know you don’t hear people you can find
them but you don’t hear it um pronounced
like it was in the 1960s 1970s about the
population crisis and so we might say
Well when did the Reckoning happen on
the population crisis and the reality I
think is it never did we just kind of
moved on and other issues like climate
change took took its place I think it’s
conceivable that that in my children’s
generation climate change will still be
there it’ll be around as an issue um but
it’ll be a lot like how we think about
population today yeah population matters
it’s important um population policies
don’t exist as population policies um
but we talk about health we talk about
education we talk about women’s rights
which are all relevant to population so
I do think that there’s uh you know my
leading candidate is that um new
understandings quietly replace the old
without people saying uh oh we were
wrong about that no one I mean Paul
Erick was just on 60 Minutes last year
talking about the same things that he
that he used to talk about um I have
noticed I have noticed that as as this
new understanding does start to be
discussed and it has been discussed to
some degree the the the story line
is we’re being successful on climate
policy all of the decisions we made the
Paris agreement have led us to bend the
curve um and that’s another talk in more
detail I don’t think it has yet I think
the the real story is that we adopted as
the leading scenario a flawed scenario
and it defeats the whole purpose of
scenario planning right scenario
planning is based on the Assumption we
don’t know the future need to consider a
wide range and so we bet on one that was
politically convenient for alarmist
narratives um but not particularly
realistic quickly share your view on
that one one cave none of the other
scenarios became P at roughly a trillion
dollars a year of spending programs the
spending programs in place in U EU and
us so we have this massive enti Ms and
direct spending and mandates and
subsidies that are unprecedent we didn’t
have them for population
control oh well well I mean as as you
know Matthew Connelly says in his book
fatal misconception um which I also
recommend there was a lot of bad things
done in the name of population policy
for a long time um and you know I’m I’m
very much of the view view is that good
or bad policy doesn’t emerge from
scientific understandings and so um one
of the things that that I’m pretty sure
of is that that politics is
self-correcting maybe in some cases on a
faster time scale than is science um and
as we see as people feel the
consequences of higher pric energy
whether they’re in France or Nigeria or
the United States they they they lash
out I mean you can see Farmers you know
taking action in Europe just um just in
the most recent months so I I do think
that um you know there’s one thing that
I’ve written about um in my book The
Climate fix it’s called The Iron law of
climate which is that people respond to
economics and they don’t like higher
price energy so um if if the subsidies
that are put in place whether in the
United States or Europe do not lead to
accelerated economic growth better per
capita standards of living obvious
improvements better Technologies and so
on those policies won’t sustained now is
it true that those policies could have
some inefficiencies and have some
problems in the in the shorter term
absolutely um I don’t think that’s
unique to climate or environmental
issues uh actually yeah my answer is
substantially the same I don’t think you
ever get a reckoning on just about
anything but you do see those slow
changes and the population one is a good
comparison um like the emissions
forecast Roger points to uh I used to
Ben wattenberg put me on this 20 years
ago it used to be that the UN population
agency would do every year or every
other year uh you know Century long
predictions of population growth rates
and they have a high case middle and low
one and over the last 25 years or so uh
the highest case is now lower than what
the lowest case used to be so year by
year that changes and you you know now
it’s not unusual to see the New York
Times saying is a a birth dir Ben
wattenberg again was on to this 25 years
ago saying our big problem is going to
be too low of fertility rates well now
that isn’t a proposition entertained by
the New York Times so I think the the
way I think of it is um
uh oh I’ll mention about the politics in
a minute is um I think what will happen
by degrees is that climate change like
many other environmental issues will
become a normal issue it won’t go away
but it won’t be this extraordinary you
know the climate crisis is now so the AP
style book says use climate crisis and
your news stories about climate Okay um
the population one politics a little
different but I had a student asked me
about this recently uh and I thought
well this is unusual cuz that’s like you
know a question from my student days
just you know around the time of the
boow war it seems like now U Back In
little known episode back around 1970 or
71 when you know the first Earth Day is
happening and all the new NEPA and all
the legislation is booming on the scene
uh Nelson Rockefeller persuaded Nixon
that you need to have a population
policy so Nixon set up I think it might
have been a formal presidential
commission like the grace commission and
others that happened now and then should
the United States have a population
policy to limit population growth and
what it would be like so they commission
some papers they have some meetings and
somebody raised their hand one day and
said you realize that if we have a
population policy in this country it
will disproportionately affect
minorities because they have the highest
fertility rates and that commission was
never heard from again it just quietly
disappeared and now does you you can you
have to work really hard to find this
right so that kind of is a certain echo
of current policies right uh our current
you know political currents um and so
you know that last point that that poll
I showed that showed this uptick that
the Galla people lyd Assad thinks is
actually Republicans that in my mind is
kind of a hopeful sign in the sense I’m
just saying that it might mean that
environmentalism environmental issues
including climate will start to reset a
normal and something looks more normal
that like you like education healthc
care we fight like cats and dogs over
that but the point is both parties do
fight about it in ways of trying to look
for Solutions and playing the game and
just one last anecdote I you know
remember oh gosh almost 30 years ago now
I get invited to the Republican National
committee’s meeting of Team 100 that was
their $100,000 donors or as today RNC
would say small
donors right uh and I give a talk on the
environment I sort of go through sort of
these bunch of people said oh that’s all
very interesting but why are we talking
about their issue and that’s when my
head hits the table go you you know no
that’s not okay you get the point uh
should when the two parties compete for
an issue that’s when we make the most
policy progress even though nobody’s
happy about it at any take a
moment
ah uh JP Hogan it’s a few questions in
one
but on the sci in 2006 they started
doing the EU EU and the US did a lot of
cutting of
CO2 tyrannically I guess but um so we
had the reductions while then China
India increased so we had a flipping of
the daily greenhouse effect for one side
of the northern hemisphere to the other
that is almost a man-made climate change
from the cuts so I wasn’t sure where
your science is I was always annoyed
that they weren’t like controlling their
Solutions and checking the science on
whether their Solutions were causing
problems you have studies on where that
flipping has caused weather
changes
um that’s um so that would be the first
question um
I’ll leave it to that for
now yeah I mean on the science of
climate change and the the effects of of
carbon dioxide Cuts I mean the the
answer is that if you take a look at the
the historical record of carbon dioxide
accumulating in the atmosphere and it is
the whole atmosphere not where it’s
produced um it’s been going up up up up
there’s a seasonal cycle um if you take
a look at the data um there has been
actions taken but the global rate of
decarbonization which is carbon dioxide
per unit of GDP
um has been pretty much linear for the
last 50 years so carbon dioxide
emissions have not peaked they’re not
going down um in some places they are
going down as you say correctly the
United States um so it’s it’s peaking
emissions in 2005 um and it’s gone down
since then but largely due to the
deployment of Renewables solar and wind
but also um probably more significantly
natural gas from fracking um has
displaced coal um in Europe it’s been
similar um the biggest advance in um in
carbon free energy was actually
deployment was in France in the 1980s
with nuclear power so um there are
predictions the International Energy
agency thinks we’re going to Peak all
the fossil fuels by 2030 um we will see
but as of this moment there’s no reason
to expect that climate policies as
climate policy focused on emissions have
any discernable influence on the climate
system
um a while ago I met a NASA engineer and
he said oh well the CO2 isn’t escaping
what came to mind was well did it used
to go through an ozone hole
so where’re having heard an stist say
well it isn’t escaping how did it used
to
escape um and was is was was an ozone
hole helping CO2 Escape where it built
up yeah I mean the short answer is is no
um the CO2 when it’s emitted um for
purposes of human society and the
climate system uh CO2 is in the
atmosphere for for not forever but from
a policy standpoint it might as well be
so thank
you ruy has
a ruy to Shara um what I’m curious about
and what I worry about is not that I
think these you know sort of the media
model can go down to like 2.4 degrees or
2.3 degrees and that could be a more
widespread understanding but it’s it’s
not clear to me this have any effect on
the climate debate at all because you
know there’s a built-in you know button
that can be pushed on this issue
constantly which is weather right the
weather attribution industry is like
incredibly powerful it Gemini this huge
section to the Democratic party massive
interest groups there’s foundations
putting hundreds of billions and what do
they have to point to at this point they
can always point to the weather there’s
always something going on and there and
the dialogue at this point and in the
sort of overall immedia completely
impervious to what the actual underlying
findings from the ipcc are in these
weather trends and weather events as you
written about in your blog and in other
places so I guess I I just saying I’m
not sure that you know a bit more common
sense and what the models really say is
actually going to have that much effect
and that the real problem is you know
the weather attribution thing there’s
always going to be something going on
like the O the ocean look at how hot
it’s been this last year you’re
unbelievable this is so extreme we’re
all about to blow up so what do you do
about that I mean I know you’re going to
address it maybe later today but I won’t
be here so I wanted to ask if you’re
here at six o’clock tonight right it’s a
great question and of course you’re
absolutely right I mean one of the other
responses to this changing perspectives
um that is out there is that that
Advocates the the Lang the apocalyptic
language they used to use to describe
four or 5° C is recal and said oh my
gosh it’s at 2 Celsius now okay um the
the weather attribution industry so so
that’s a technical term but that means
something happened can we pin it on a
cause and usually the cause is emissions
of greenhouse gases um it’s really
interesting because the the science of
so-called attribution has departed from
the you know the so-called gold standard
of the intergovernmental panel on
climate change for a long time now um
the the ipcc has been
um pretty stalwart and and I have a lot
of respect for them have called things
straight on extreme weather um most of
the policy world the advocacy world the
journalistic world has decided to ignore
the ipcc um so there’s been people to
fill that Gap there’s a new industry of
of weather attribution um there’s good
work by people like Niko stair Hans Von
Storch um Mike Hume um who have looked
at how we think of climate going back 50
years and it turns out there’s there’s
really I mean we have a different media
media ecosystem now but there’s really
not that’s changed in how we see
portense in the weather um it used to be
you know drought follows the plow from
the time that the uh we were colonizing
the American West um the idea that when
you farm it it brings drought and we’re
causing it it’s it’s our fault um so I
don’t know that that ever goes away um
and there uh um every time every time
there’s a weather event um anywhere in
the world and extreme weather is
actually normal on planet Earth so you
actually have to go into the statistics
to identify changes it’s pinned right
now on human cause climate change um and
I fully expect that to continue that’ll
be a tool of advocacy um going forward
and smart climate and energy policies
are going to have to be put in place in
that context because it’s I don’t think
it’s going to go away yeah you know ruy
I have I for the longest time and still
to a certain extent tried to resist
making the comparison to a lot of
environmental activism to religion I
just that I prefer to stick with the
data and you know po right and the
objective realities of the world uh and
not traffic in what can quickly become a
just of O over generalization it’s
getting harder and harder all the time
uh because well give a couple of
anecdotes uh um people often ask me why
are PR years why are environmentalists
so gloomy say because it makes them
happy
I actually kind of believe this it’s you
know it’s a secular apocalypse without
the promise of redemption but then
equally obvious is there is very much
the the the you know the Heretics Vibe
about it right I mean so you know I
wrote an article I was a cover story for
the Weekly Standard one that still
existed about Jay facon a republican
made his money in electronics wants to
do something on climate but he didn’t
subscribe to the party line so Tom Styer
had to damn him in the New York Times
it’s like no here’s a person who’s
halfway with you but he a ha and Tom
Styer who made Rogers life miserable
behind the scenes as we know so there’s
this demand for absolute Conformity to
uh I hate to say a religious Orthodoxy
and I don’t know if that’s ever going to
end or not um and I you know that that
seems to me as a sociological matter is
very much evident and it drives a lot of
the a lot of the trends Roger pointed to
and I think it’s a shame and it’s going
to go away it’s some maybe it’ll be
something new right so actually it was
uh Brett Stevens The Wall Street Journal
and he was still there said climate
change may go away someday what
something must replace it and my nominee
was you may every once while hear a
story of the news about how the polar
magnetic poles are weakening or moving a
bit and if they actually collapse it is
a apparently a really big Calamity for
the planet and uh surely they will
figure out a way to blame it on human
activity you know the electricity Grid
or something um hasn’t happened yet but
that would be my nominee for what will
replace it for people who really like
apocalyptic thinking cuz I think human
beings may be hardwired for some element
of eschatology and apocalyptic thinking
and once conventional religion starts to
erode as it’s been doing for 200 years
what replaces it well let me let me add
to that um I do a lot of work with uh
Folks at insurance and reinsurance and
I’ve noticed in the last few years um
not out in public and and not in the um
in in the discussions out in in front of
people but these are folks who who who
make and lose money based on their bets
on the weather yeah and one of the
things that um I’ve seen is more realism
in the closed door discussions over
Trends in weather so for example I was
at Lloyds of London last fall um we were
at a chadam house rule event um and the
the head of uh of disasters and I can
violate chadam rule because it was
published in the financial times later
um she said she said you know we believe
in climate change we think it’s real
it’s serious but we haven’t seen its
effect on our portfolio management um
and so that was headlined in the
financial times a couple months later
where the financial times says head of
Lloyds of London you know you know
private meeting says exactly that um I
do think if you’re someone who manages
risk that’s related to accurately
understanding climate and weather trends
um people are starting to realize you
can’t get caught up in the hype in the
public discussions so I think it’s
perfectly reasonable to expect we may
have a a two- paath dialogue going on
there’s the public dialogue and you know
as you say it’s you know if you know
it’s it’s cold today that’s climate
change I mean it’s it’s fine it’s part
of the the the spirit of the times um
but I think for people who make
decisions where they have to know you
know I’m putting in you know $100
million worth of Agricultural Product
this year I have to have a good
understanding of Elo linia those sort of
decisions will necessarily be grounded
in reality just add just quickly I saw a
headline yesterday I’ll try and find it
for you I foret it was Reuters or
somewhere and it said uh insurance
companies charging higher premiums for
climate risk and making huge profits I
thought I wonder if they connect
the why okay you get the idea yeah
there’s
the excuse me thank you um Gan Prince
from London with apologies for being
late complications with airplanes and
things two brief comments and then a
question if I may the comment first to
You Stephen um and all of this is to do
with framing and the nature of the
moment we’re currently
in yes I I think you’re absolutely on
the money will the apocalyptic religion
analogy is more than an analogy but
there’s another which is closely
associated which is bankruptcy and
typically people who are going bankrupt
are the last people who know they’re
going bankrupt and as you know the
saying goes when you go bankrupt you go
bankrupt slowly first and then suddenly
right so there is a collapse
Dynamic uh about these sorts
belief
structures specifically if they’re
misframing the nature of the problem the
second is to the question that was asked
over here which is about what happened
last year Well Mother Nature as I’m sure
everybody in the room knows is sometimes
Bountiful to us and she’s just given us
This Magnificent worked example of what
produces global warming and it wasn’t
systemic it was a weather event it was a
combination of HTH the volcano which
increased the water vapor in the
atmosphere by
10% uh it was a big alino and it was a
solar maximum you don’t need more
stressors to produce what happened
during last year and I by the way in
London and in the groups which I’m in
I’ve noticed a
significant early movement beginning
which is that there is a mouse of Doubt
creeping into the minds even of the most
uh fanatical that
firstly they’re not breaking through
with the public and secondly maybe
actually there is a big difference
between climate and weather and with all
due respect I think that you were Roger
in one or two of those answers eliding
the two and I think maybe here’s my
question maybe it’s time for us to be a
bit more severe with ourselves and
systematically to
divide climate which is a wicked problem
and weather which is a much more bounded
problem uh this is where we all came in
25 years ago and I I live not very far
away from the Met Office and I do
occasionally interact with them and
that’s the seat of the religion in my
country uh and I do notice the mouse of
Doubt is beginning to creep also because
of course why are we in this mess it’s
because of the misapplication of weather
models to to to climate as we all know
so what last year showed
us supports what we know from the
long-term record which is that there is
a relationship between CO2 and
temperature except it doesn’t actually
work the right way around because the
temperature goes up before the CO2 goes
up this suggest that it’s not really
that causal and so we have to I would
suggest start to ask ourselves
fundamental questions which some of us
began 20 odd years ago and then they
became completely taboo because that
meant that you were a denier and you
were a this and a that and you are you
an apostate the religious analogy is
correct we and I merely report I mean
there is I’ve been in discussions in the
last 6 months which I’ve not been in for
the last 20 years people are beginning
to realize that climate change as an
issue which is about to be inscribed by
my next government and will bankrupt the
country if they do it this actually is
going to bankrupt us back to my first
observation so are we given our
responsibilities and an organization
like this which is to be ahead of the
curve is it time now to take a deep
breath and to consider whether we’ve
been too uh genuflecting to the general
framing because of the fear of all of
those accusations which are out there
maybe it’s time for us to go back
climate the movie is quite helpful in
this regard isn’t it
so so for a long time and Gwyn it’s
great to see you welcome to Washington
um for a long time I I’ve argued that
arguments over climate science
um are probably the least productive way
we can address issues of energy policy
and climate policy um people are can
have legitimate views here or there um
the core understandings of the
intergovernmental panel on climate
change have accurately reflected the
core understandings of the climate
Community going back 30 years and these
haven’t changed and this is this is
something that I think um we should
really take note of um is that climate
science doesn’t turn on a dime we don’t
change our understandings today tomorrow
um we’ve known what we’ve known for a
long time um but we also know that if we
don’t have uh low price energy expanding
energy access in parts of the world
energy security pretty much everywhere
um we’re not going to make good
decisions about energy so um the other
thing to understand is that the world
has been decarbonizing for a century and
so when we talk about mitigation policy
and climate policy what we’re talking
about is accelerating a trend that’s
well been in place we will achieve
absolutely nothing on energy policy by
arguing finer points of climate science
I you know call me up after the hundreds
of studies are are published on the
hunga Tanga volcano and tell me what
they find my views on adapting to
extreme weather or mitigating climate
change are not going to change based on
any of those studies or any 100 of those
studies so I mean I appreciate that that
there there’s interest in these topics
but for me um finer details of climate
science as as they are you know hi Dad
um are are are are not where the action
is yeah I um I I’ll profess admit to
being negligent I’ve quit following
climate science intensively I used to
try and read large chunks of the what I
thought were the most relevant chapters
of the ipcc reports that came out over a
few years and they’re you know they’re
difficult for a non-sp specialist and I
think even for a specialist I mean I’m
like you I’m sort of amazed they’re able
to put together a report of that size at
all uh and I agree that they mostly play
it straight I actually I think the
scientists who do the main chapters do
play it straight and then it’s the
summaries that’s where okay when the
Mischief enters um and the energy
question is much more important because
we’re doing that and that’s also a
little more approachable for the lay
person so uh I think so I’m going to tie
two things together here I mean I’m only
following British politics from afar but
my perception is is that the Net Zero
Pledge of the Tor government is one of
the things that’s gotten into such deep
trouble in heading for Landslide Wipeout
after a landslide Triumph four years ago
that’s a real case study of political
incompetence across the board but I I
keep hearing it Net Zero is one part of
it and here and there I’ll read stories
of the labor party exploiting this and
it’s not clear to me I maybe right that
the labor party will be just as
committed to uh you know General Net
Zero goal more so you
think really okay but then then I read
ruy the other day I actually haven’t
read your latest piece it’s in my
reading queue about what it why Liberals
are going to embrace energy real right
uh I my again I’m Lo to make predictions
too but I think we’re going to look back
on especially in this country I think
we’re going to conclude that we’re
overdoing it with wind and solar now um
that it was high price to pay for not
that great of improvements I think but
we’ll you know we’ll just have to see
I’ll say the last thing um one thing I
never expected to see well two things
that are related two things I never
thought I’d see in California
specifically and more broadly are more
and more you might call oldfashioned
mainstream environmentalists saying we
made a mistake on nuclear power 40 years
ago uh and then second in California is
uh which invented sort of anti-growth
land use policies 50 years ago there’s
now a very left-wing uh dominated What’s
called the yimi movement and they yes in
my backyard and these are people who are
typical leftwing organizing efforts and
energy and all the rest of that are
saying good grief we’ve got to get rid
of a lot of land use and housing
regulations they’re just strangling
affordable housing I never thought I’d
see that yet we have both of those
things happening that’s a little bit of
reason for optimism I think let me uh
I’m going to comment on ru’s piece on
why Liberals are going to be energy
realists with a real world example
picking up on this and and addressing
this point so I live in Boulder Colorado
wonderful place um probably one of the
most liberal places yeah on this
continent um so about two weeks ago um
there was a forecasted Windstorm and
just several years ago there was a big
fire burned a thousand houses uh just
outside of ER and so the local power
provider Excel Energy um who has fears
of liability said okay you don’t want
any fires from power lines down we’re
going to shut down the the electricity
in Boulder and they shut it down for two
days and everyone I know everyone I
spoke to the response was this is
unacceptable this this is not going to
happen and huge complaints we had a
conver a lot of energy realists were
born that weekend um so the reality is
and and again I think politics is going
to be
self-correcting the UK is an example
Germany’s an example there may be uh
some significant short-term damage done
but people are not going to sit by and
let their economies go bankrupt it’s
just not it’s just not going to happen
um and so if there are
disastrous policies or
politicians Liz trust for example and
there are consequences economically you
will see a backlash um the frustrating
thing thing of course is that democracy
is very blunt instrument and that
correction can take a long time and it’s
it’s not precise this is why I think
policy matters and and I know it’s not
popular in an era of politics but this
is why you know Eggheads and wonks need
to have good ideas good plans in place
so when that moment comes when people
are dissatisfied it’s not let’s just put
the other political party in power
somebody needs to have the good ideas
and so I think um this is why I’m I
focus you know kind of like a laser on
energy rather than on climate because I
don’t think we have Smart Energy
policies just waiting on the Shelf to
hand to to policy makers when that
moment opens up and we have a chance to
change policy
course my question is about whether we
need to open the
APT car
has this is a slightly broader question
but U there’s been a lot of push back
against ESG do you think it’s basically
just gone underground in Corporate
America the environmental part of
it um yes I say underground I mean these
things tend to reinvent themselves so uh
uh again back around 2000 the big
enthusiasm for corporations was the
triple bottom line well that was just
the early version of ESG it was you know
I I forget what the three parts were but
it was just ordinary profit but the two
other ones were you know doing good and
it’s exactly the same as ESG but it it
didn’t you know there’s a there was a uh
environmental sustainability index as
part of the Dow Jones which I think
still exists but no one pays much
attention to it so when ASG came along
uh I thought oh it’s the same thing with
with the new label and there’s been a
very Swift backlash to it as you’ve seen
and so it’ll still be around you know
your public affairs uh and environmental
uh uh compliance uh uh you know units
and big corporations there
you they’re sort of down with the
underlying ideas behind them so I don’t
know if it will come back as prominently
with a big flashy label um but it’s
still going to be around um but it is
kind of interesting how quickly that
whole light slogan got a black eye it
used to take longer for these things to
cycle through and get a backlash and now
it happened pretty
fast so it’s really funny there’s um
actually saw CH this the other day that
an earnings calls that all the big
companies do quarterly uh mentions of
ESG have just plummeted in the last two
years have used to be you know a lot of
them that just just dived and well never
heard of it right and you know even
Larry fank at Black Rock says we don’t
use that term anymore so there you
go so we have any online
questions oh you got to look okay cuz
there’s you know it’s Roger’s father
maybe watching I don’t know you said hi
Dad I hope so yeah who knows I always
had mixed be the only one
I don’t know
um problem with I revisit these things
is I I get optimistic and then I get
pessimistic again at the same time when
I think about optimism makes you
pessimistic it could work that way right
yeah by the way my recollection of your
department was not just the usual
bureaucratic stuff but I was actually
sincerely impressed that it was not
politicized I mean everyone there was
mostly pretty left or far left but they
were serious about the issues and it
wasn’t and I thought that was a good
that was a my mind a sign of Health yeah
we had a healthy very healthy
Department listening asks two related
questions one is what’s the best way for
the to make inroads into the Biden
Administration I think this is directed
at e Roger but probably applicable to
both to make inroads into the Biden
Administration for applying the results
of the latest studies on climate do you
agree that it’s likely that the old
scenario implications will continue to
be applied until after the presidential
election
to help the president mobilize his base
yeah boy if I had if I knew how to make
inroads into the Biden Administration
I’d probably have a different job than I
have now um I I mean this is the The
Perennial problem of of trying to get
good policy analysis into Political
processes um the Biden Administration is
is very quickly painting itself into a
corner on climate um it it has its
social cost of carbon calculations the
EPA regular L uses um another
methodology that depend upon um this
most extreme scenario RCP 8.5 um the
Biden administration’s National Climate
assessment which unfortunately is run
out of the Executive Office of the
President um has in its last two
iterations so going back it was under
Trump also it identified this extreme
scenario this is the one that we’re
headed towards and then this less
extreme scenario as the 4.5 scenario
this is policy success U now if you go
to the framework convention on climate
change and look at their annual report
you’ll see that the real world
trajectory is undershooting the success
story so let me repeat that the real
world in terms of emissions is
undershooting the Biden Administration
success story now this creates a
situation how do you emerge from that
how do you come to the public and say
Hey you know that scenario we told you
was success just just two years ago oh
we’re beating that now
we’re we’re well ahead that’s a real
hard message to get to put out because
you look like uh you’re either being
disingenuous or you didn’t set the right
target to begin with so um I do think
and all right then the second part is
that the emissions reductions promises
commitments targets of the inflation
reduction act um something like 50 to
52% by 2030 or 2035 um the Biden
Administration is not going to hit those
um the Biden Administration based on its
own Energy Information administ ation is
uh going to have an emissions reduction
record of
0.7% reduction per year when it’s Target
implies it’s going to be 89% or more um
I wouldn’t put that out before the
election but there’s going to be um some
very dissatisfied disgruntled people um
on the left in the Progressive side when
they realize that those aren’t happening
so for me I would go to the Biden
Administration and say hey your
political fortunes going forward are
going to be compromised by the fact that
you painted yourself in a corner on
climate maybe you should have some
better policies um rather than saying
hey here’s some better policies you know
one of the ironies of the last few years
is I think this is still true uh that
Coal Fired power plant retirements
happen faster under Trump than they have
during Biden now that’s not the whole
story there’s probably more parts to
that but here’s the broader point but
one problem especially in this issue
more so than many others is the siloing
of the way this modern government is
because it’s so big and
uh so I’ve long had the perception both
here and also with a lot of European
governments is that you’ll have the
people in the you know the environmental
Advocates and people who’ve got various
appointed jobs and then you have the
people in the finance Ministries or in
budget offices who actually know the
score what it’s going to cost and what
it’ll actually do uh and they often
don’t talk to each other so you know if
you go back to just give one example the
um the Kyoto Protocol in the late
90s uh and you know it was Larry Summers
as treasury Secret AR who said this
treaty is way too asymmetrical in its
economic impact and telling the
President Clinton privately you really
can’t have this ratified we can’t really
go with this thing this thing’s okay uh
now fast forward the Trump years so
Trump and his big tax bill what was it
regulation 45 I forget there was this
little feature that had a tax credit for
lower carbon Energy Systems and they a
like $7 a ton was the tax advantage of
it and I thought oh wait a minute that
means the Trump Administration just put
a price on carbon
I wonder if the Trump Administration
knows that’s happening right so the
point is is that there’s somewhat more
continuity between you might say the
people you never hear about people at
the Energy Information Administration
people in the E some of the people in
the EPA and then the people driving
policy for you know the a mix of reasons
many of them political in the white
houses and all the rest of that that’s
an ongoing problem with both parties uh
and you know I don’t know if we’ll ever
make much progress on all that but
that’s the background Dynamic is uh the
the different ual practical real world
differences between the two parties are
are not as wide as you would think from
reading the newspapers let me just
respond to one thing St um presidents
sitting presidents don’t close Coal
Fired power plants right um and if you
want to know why Coal Fired power plants
are closing you know this decade in the
previous decade you have to go back to
the 1970s to to you know to Jimmy Carter
Richard Nixon to policies put in place
then that laid the foundation for the
technological innovations that would be
the fracking Revolution and I mean this
is why Smart Energy policy is important
because the decisions we put in place
today are going to be powering the
United States and the world in 2050 um
and it’s not oh we’re going to pass a
law today and then tomorrow we’ll see
these changes I see we’re getting the
the the the the hook is coming out so
yeah well that I think we’ve exhausted
everybody yeah g all day but that would
be that would be bad and you got to go
again tonight yeah yeah do all come back
tonight for uh the more detailed part of
it it’ll be fun I’ll be here good so
all right well thanks everybody thank
you
[Applause]
For years, American environmentalists held a largely pessimistic outlook on our planet’s future. But recently, the environmental movement has seen significant changes. Join Steven F. Hayward—a resident scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, who previously authored an AEI book on favorable environmental trends—for a presentation on how the trend data demonstrate the momentum of environmental progress in the US and around the world.
Afterward, join Dr. Hayward and AEI’s Roger Pielke Jr. as they discuss environmental trends and the exceptional case of climate change, which overshadows almost every other environmental issue. Dr. Hayward and Dr. Pielke will explore what we have learned about the environment, what important information gaps remain, and lessons for future policy choices.
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