29 October 2007

Global Climate Change: Stuebi on New Scientist Climate Policy Poll

Polls can be meaningless. Sometimes its the sampling. Sometimes its untrustworthy respondents. Often, it's the interpreters who run roughshod over the results. It's easy to make a poll say what you want it to say: just ask the questions in a way that will give you the answers you want.

I'm skeptical about polls.

So is Richard T. Stuebi, the BP Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement at The Cleveland Foundation, and Founder and President of NextWave Energy, Inc:

"It seems to me that poll respondents give themselves far too much credit for being well-informed or magnanimous, relative to what they actually know or what will they will do when making real decisions that really affect them," Stuebi writes over at the CleanTech blog:

However, this past summer, a poll conducted and reported by New Scientist magazine did seem to shed some useful insights that policy-makers ought to consider. The reported highlights of the survey were that there was substantial public support in the U.S. for carbon limitations, that the public preferred outright standards to cap-and-trade or (egads!) carbon taxes, and that the desired focus of carbon reductions should be on the electric power sector than on vehicles (don't tread on SUV!).

In my view, the most illuminating finding was the weakness of support for carbon imitations if they induced any significant economic pain. In other words, respondents were fine with climate legislation -- as long as it really didn't cost much. On the other hand, when asked if they would support carbon emission requirements that would increase energy prices significantly -- which is likely to be the case to achieve the magnitudes of emission reductions that are widely viewed necessary to have meaningful impact in protecting the planet -- support evaporated.

But, Stuebi confesses, "This is one of the few instances where I actually believe what the poll results say, without any bias." The finding that changed his mind, Stuebi says, is "that -- to avoid catastrophic climate change during the balance of this century -- either we need to quickly develop a zero/low baseload carbon energy source that costs essentially no more than conventional coal generation, or that we quickly need to substantially increase U.S. political will and courage to endure economic sacrifice."

Stuebi's conclusion? "Either will be tremendously challenging. Failing on both counts could doom the planet."

Access the poll here: New Scientist

3 comments:

Edukator said...

Great Blog! Great information on here.

Isn't Stuebi falling into a classic "either or" scenario though? Why not raise the price of energy a little bit and pour funding into developing alternative energies? In fact why not tax coal and oil and put the money towards making and subsidizing green energy? That, to me, would be a way to shift the population to green energy.

Anthropositor said...

It seems to me that the central issue Is the production of energy without the pollution attached.

The ultimate answer is solar collection in space and beamed transmission to remote collectors on Earth.

The production of alcohol from corn, a grain needed for both human and livestock consumption is a very bad idea. Cellulosic production of alcohol would be a far better way to go.

Unknown said...

The problem is, edukator, that taxing THE most power full enterprises in the world won't go as easy as it's said.
And, even worse, would mean that green energy is, indeed, more expensive than carbon based energy sources, bringing us back to what Stuebi pointed out.

In my opinion, every community round the world should implement there own green solution, based on their local characteristics, never forgetting global trends and standard solutions.