Obama Needs to Spark a Global Green Deal to Create a Sustainable Economy

By Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation. Posted March 13, 2009.

Most significant, President Obama has advocated policies that, at least domestically, align perfectly with those of a Global Green Deal. The stimulus package increases federal spending on green energy to three times the current level. But stabilizing our climate also requires that governments stop subsidizing activities that make things worse. Here, Obama still has far to go. The stimulus package contains $17 billion for mass transit but almost twice that much for new roads, according to Friends of the Earth. Senate-House conferees wisely deleted $50 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power plants from the bill, but fossil fuels continue to receive nearly twice as much in federal subsidies as do renewables and energy efficiency. For example, the stimulus package devotes $4.6 billion to research carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that, if it can be made to work -- a big if, in some experts' minds -- would capture a coal plant's carbon dioxide emissions and store them underground, where they would not contribute to global warming. Without CCS, continuing to burn coal is incompatible with preventing catastrophic climate change, says Hansen. But since it will be many years before CCS can be deployed, the more urgent task is to stop building coal plants and start phasing out existing ones. That goal, which Obama has given no sign of endorsing, is possible only if green alternatives receive even greater government support.

Energy efficiency is the alternative of choice under the Global Green Deal because it is the quickest and most lucrative means of reducing CO2 emissions and sparking economic development. Naysayers often complain that going green costs too much, especially in this time of economic crisis; but evidence suggests otherwise. Corporations and governments alike have found that investments in energy efficiency are extraordinarily profitable. Over a three-year period beginning in 1999, BP invested $20 million to increase energy efficiency throughout its global network of production facilities and offices. The company ended up saving $650 million in fuel costs -- a stunning thirty-two-fold return on investment. "Six companies -- IBM, DuPont, British Telecom, Alcan, NorskeCanada and Bayer -- have each reduced emissions by at least 60 percent since the early 1990s, collectively saving more than $4 billion in the process," according to Michael Northrop of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Happily, the stimulus package contains $9.4 billion to upgrade the efficiency of government and military buildings. Under the Global Green Deal, the government would extend the same opportunity to businesses and households. Federal loans would underwrite the upgrades, and the resulting savings on energy bills would be used to pay taxpayers back with interest. The deal would also boost the efficiency of vehicles, appliances, and power and water use. For example, the rules governing electric utilities would be revised to reward them for selling less power. California did this in the 1970s. Since then, the state's electricity use has been flat, despite a growing population and economy, while the utilities have enjoyed solid profits.

Bringing other states up to California's efficiency levels would save as much electricity as is produced by 60 percent of the nation's coal-fired power plants, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute. To offset the remaining 40 percent, solar and wind power must continue their recent rapid expansion. Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, notes that Texas, of all places, "has 45,000 megawatts of wind power either on line, under construction or in development, which is about equal to the average amount of electricity generated by forty-five coal plants." That's more than Texas can consume, and it illustrates the importance of developing a national "smart grid" so that wind power produced in one region can be transported to customers elsewhere. The stimulus package invests $11 billion in this vital initiative.

Although the Obama administration is embarking on a scaled-down version of the Global Green Deal at home, similar policies must be applied internationally as well. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report made it clear that rich nations cannot survive unless developing nations -- particularly China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies whose emissions are rising rapidly -- also cut emissions. As a moral and practical matter, the rich will have to help pay for this shift; otherwise it will not happen. Congressional Republicans will howl, but the facts are clear: rich countries released 80 percent of the greenhouse gases warming the atmosphere, and on a per capita basis they still emit much more than developing nations, where hundreds of millions of poor people need affordable energy. Most rich nations have long rejected the idea of paying the poor to go green. Now we have no choice. Instead of resisting, the United States should make a virtue of necessity by helping these countries go green at maximum speed. If we're smart, a Global Green Deal will open new markets for US exporters, just as the Marshall Plan did after World War II.

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Mark Hertsgaard, the environment correspondent for The Nation, is the author of six books, including "Earth Odyssey: Around the World In Search of Our Environmental Future." His next book is called, "Living Through the Storm: How We Survive the Next 50 Years of Climate Change."

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