Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 4: The most urgent climate policy

[RedEarth]

A livable climate can (probably) survive the burning of almost all of the world’s conventional oil and gas — but not if we also burn even half the coal (see here and figure below).

So the top priority for any climate policy must be to stop the building of traditional coal plants — which is why that has become the top priority of NASA’s James Hansen (see here). The next priority is to replace existing coal plants with carbon free power, which could include coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS), as fast as possible. And that means a related priority is to encourage the introduction of CCS as quickly as possible, to see if that is a viable large-scale solution.

A climate policy that does not start by achieving at least the first goal, a moratorium on coal without CCS, must be labeled a failure. By that measure, the cap and trade system currently being employed by the Europeans looks to be a failure, as we’ll see.

..........

The bottom line is that we need an immediate moratorium on the construction of new traditional coal plants. That is a higher priority than a cap & trade bill, although such a bill is also a high priority. If the West cannot stop building such coal plants and quickly show the world that multiple alternatives — particularly efficiency and renewables — are practical and affordable, then how will we be able to convince the developing world, especially China and India, to stop building such coal plants within the decade?

http://climateprogress.org/2008/05/05/is-450-ppm-politically-possible-part-4-the-most-urgent-climate-policy-isnt-a-co2-price/

[pscot]

1. No

It will have to be raining fire from the skys before we even consider putting the brakes on. All the prescriptions offered so far have one thing in common; they are painless. We are so not ready for this. China is building 80,000 kilometers of new freeways, in addition to all those coal fired power plants. WE are going to hit the wall at 500 miles an hour.

[GliderGuider]

2. There isn't a solution for the problem posed by atmospheric CO2.

The combination of technical difficulty, political infeasibility, national intransigence, global scope, the scale of the problem and the timeframe (a decade or two at the most) make it an utterly insoluble problem.

It's time we turned our attention and resources to adaptation.

[pscot]

3. I'm going to learn how to breathe CO2

I plan to practice by lying on the floor in the garage with the car running.