The Climate Economy Is About to Explode

A new report suggests that the Inflation Reduction Act could be even bigger than Congress thinks.

By Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, Oct. 5, 2022

Late last month, analysts at the investment bank Credit Suisse published a research note about America’s new climate law that went nearly unnoticed. The Inflation Reduction Act, the bank argued, is even more important than has been recognized so far: The IRA will “will have a profound effect across industries in the next decade and beyond” and could ultimately shape the direction of the American economy, the bank said. The report shows how even after the bonanza of climate-bill coverage earlier this year, we’re still only beginning to understand how the law works and what it might mean for the economy.

The report made a few broad points in particular that are worth attending to: First, the IRA might spend twice as much as Congress thinks. Many of the IRA’s most important provisions, such as its incentives for electric vehicles and zero-carbon electricity, are “uncapped” tax credits. That means that as long as you meet their terms, the government will award them: There’s no budget or limit written into the law that restricts how much the government can spend. The widely cited figure for how much the IRA will spend to fight climate change—$374 billion—is in large part determined by the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of how much those tax credits will get used.

But that estimate is wrong, the bank claims. In fact, so many people and businesses will use those tax credits that the IRA’s total spending is likely to be more than $800 billion, double what the CBO projects. And because federal spending tends to catalyze private investment, that could send total climate spending across the economy to roughly $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years. That’s significantly more money flowing into green-energy industries than the CBO projected, though it’s unclear if that additional money will lead to more carbon reductions than earlier analyses have projected.

Second, the U.S. is “poised to become the world’s leading energy provider,” according to the bank. America is already the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. The IRA could further enhance its advantage in all forms of energy production, giving it a “competitive advantage in low-cost clean electricity and hydrogen production, infrastructure, geologic storage, and human capital,” the report states. By 2029, U.S. solar and wind could be the cheapest in the world at less than $5 per megawatt-hour, the bank projects; it will also become competitive in hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, and wind turbines. (The law will help America’s battery industry, but the bank doesn’t see the U.S. becoming the world’s biggest battery producer, given that China already has such a dominant advantage.)

Perhaps rosiest of all was the bank’s view of major risks to the IRA. The bill passed with not even a single Republican vote, but the bank concludes that the GOP is relatively unlikely to repeal the law, even if they take the White House in 2024. That’s because it would hurt their own voters most: “Republican-leaning states are likely to see the most investment, job, and economic benefits from the IRA,” the report claims. Instead, the IRA is most likely to stumble because America still struggles with building out its energy infrastructure: The country might not be able to get government approval to permit enough power lines, green infrastructure, and carbon-injection wells for the law to matter, the bank said. This risk is all the more heightened now that Senator Joe Manchin’s permitting-reform bill—which, for all its flaws, would have clearly allowed for more renewable transmission construction—has failed. Powerful business groups are also lobbying to revise the most transmission-friendly sections from that bill if Congress revisits it.

The Credit Suisse report is truly remarkable. What stuck with me most was this declaration: For big corporations, the IRA “definitively changes the narrative from risk mitigation to opportunity capture.” In other words, companies should no longer worry that they might be unprepared for future climate regulation, such as a carbon tax. They should be scared of missing out on the economic growth that the energy transition (and the IRA) will bring about.

If the bill’s passage wasn’t signal enough, the report shows that climate change as a political issue—and frankly environmental protection more broadly—has arrived to a wholly new place. For decades, the country’s biggest climate advocates have tried to reduce the harm that the economy causes to the environment. Now they find themselves tasked with the biggest story in the economy itself.

Perhaps most strange, even if the United States slips into recession in the next year, the IRA will only become more important. Historically, economists and businesses have treated helping the environment as a product of prosperity—if the economy is good, then companies can afford to do the right thing. But the IRA’s programs and incentives will keep flowing no matter the macro environment, which makes betting on clean energy one of the most certain economic trends of the next few years. Clean energy is now the safe, smart, government-backed bet for conservative investors. It’s really a shocking reversal of the past 40 years. It is such a change that it hasn’t yet been metabolized by the world of people involved in the issue.

So inspired by the vigor of Credit Suisse’s forecast, let me venture a few predictions of my own. The number of Americans working in a climate-relevant industry is going to explode. It is going to undergo what you might call a techification. I was a nerd and a dreamer in high school in the late aughts, which meant I paid attention to the start-ups of that era—such as Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr—in their early years. I remember that fateful moment around 2010 when the valence of the industry switched—it was right around when The Social Network came out—and working in tech went from being a career choice for dorky optimists to the default career track for many ambitious college students. A similar switch is coming for companies working on climate change: The opportunity will be too large, the money too persuasive, the problems too intriguing.

Finally, those of us who have long worked in climate change—and here I include myself, who started covering this topic in 2015—should have some excitement and even humility about this deluge of new talent. Even setting its arduous politics aside, managing climate change is a legitimately difficult technical and cultural problem—it’s going to require as many attentive and enthusiastic brains as possible, and the path to decarbonizing always required an infusion of new workers, investment, and good will. If you don’t yet work in the industry, but have always cared about climate change as an issue, well, this is your moment to get involved. These companies are going to need engineers, yes, but also programmers, accountants, marketers, HR staff, general counsels—there is space for everyone now.

The fight against climate change is going to change more in the next four years than it has in the past 40. The great story of our lives is just beginning. Welcome aboard.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/10/inflation-reduction-act-climate-economy/671659/

This 100% solar community endured Hurricane Ian with no loss of power and minimal damage

By Rachel Ramirez, CNN, October 2, 2022

Anthony Grande moved away from Fort Myers three years ago in large part because of the hurricane risk. He has lived in southwest Florida for nearly 19 years, had experienced Hurricanes Charley in 2004 and Irma in 2017 and saw what stronger storms could do to the coast.

Grande told CNN he wanted to find a new home where developers prioritized climate resiliency in a state that is increasingly vulnerable to record-breaking storm surge, catastrophic wind and historic rainfall.

What he found was Babcock Ranch — only 12 miles northeast of Fort Myers, yet seemingly light years away.

Babcock Ranch calls itself “America’s first solar-powered town.” Its nearby solar array — made up of 700,000 individual panels — generates more electricity than the 2,000-home neighborhood uses, in a state where most electricity is generated by burning natural gas, a planet-warming fossil fuel.

The streets in this meticulously planned neighborhood were designed to flood so houses don’t. Native landscaping along roads helps control storm water. Power and internet lines are buried to avoid wind damage. This is all in addition to being built to Florida’s robust building codes.

Some residents, like Grande, installed more solar panels on their roofs and added battery systems as an extra layer of protection from power outages. Many drive electric vehicles, taking full advantage of solar energy in the Sunshine State.

Climate resiliency was built into the fabric of the town with stronger storms in mind.

So when Hurricane Ian came barreling toward southwest Florida this week, it was a true test for the community. The storm obliterated the nearby Fort Myers and Naples areas with record-breaking surge and winds over 100 mph. It knocked out power to more than 2.6 million customers in the state, including 90% of Charlotte County.

But the lights stayed on in Babcock Ranch.

“It certainly exceeded our expectations of a major hurricane,” Grande, 58, told CNN.

The storm uprooted trees and tore shingles from roofs, but other than that Grande said there is no major damage. Its residents say Babcock Ranch is proof that an eco-conscious and solar-powered town can withstand the wrath of a near-Category 5 storm.

“We have proof of the case now because [the hurricane] came right over us,” Nancy Chorpenning, a 68-year-old Babcock Ranch resident, told CNN. “We have water, electricity, internet — and we may be the only people in Southwest Florida who are that fortunate.”

Grande said Hurricane Ian came through southwest Florida “like a freight train.” But he wasn’t afraid that he would lose everything in a storm, like he was when he lived in Fort Myers.

“We’re very, very blessed and fortunate to not be experiencing what they’re experiencing now in Sanibel Island and Fort Myers Beach,” Grande said. “In the times that we’re living in right now with climate change, the beach is not the place to live or have a business.”

Syd Kitson, a former professional football player for the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys, is the mastermind behind Babcock Ranch. Kitson envisioned it to be an eco-conscious and innovative neighborhood that is safe and resilient from storms like Ian.

The ranch broke ground in 2015 with the construction of the solar array — which was built and is run by Florida Power and Light — and its first residents moved into the town in 2018. Since then, the array has doubled in size and thousands of people have made Babcock their home.

“It’s a great case study to show that it can be done right, if you build in the right place and do it the right way,” said Lisa Hall, a spokesperson for Kitson, who also lives in Babcock Ranch.

“Throughout all this, there’s just so many people saying, ‘it worked, that this was the vision, this is the reason we moved here,’” Hall told CNN.

Perhaps the highest endorsement for the city is that it is now a refuge for some of Ian’s hardest-hit victims. The state opened Babcock Neighborhood School as an official shelter, even though it didn’t have the mandated generator. The solar array kept the lights on.

Some of Chorpenning’s friends who live on Sanibel Island — which is now cut off from the mainland after Ian’s devastating storm surge severed the causeway — came to shelter at a friend’s house at Babcock Ranch. It will be a while before they can go back, she said.

“They’re going to be renting a place over here for a while, while they figure out what’s going to happen out there,” she said. “I joked that we may be the only people in southwest Florida whose property value just increased.”

Even Kitson chose to ride out the storm in Babcock to see how the community would fare in the hurricane. Kitson declined CNN’s request for an interview; Hall said he is focused on helping neighboring communities rebuild.

“He was there during the storm; he said, ‘where else would I be?’” Hall said. “We built it to be resilient and as much as you plan and think you’ve done the right thing, you don’t know until you put it to the test.”

As utilities scramble to restore power across the state, Babcock residents say September storms showed that America’s energy infrastructure is not well-equipped to handle worsening extreme weather events. Hurricane Fiona ravaged Puerto Rico’s power grid when it made landfall there on September 18. Now, Ian has left millions of people in the dark in Florida.

Babcock residents say their neighborhood is a model for urban development in a climate change-ravaged future.

“It’s not what it was 20 or 25 years ago; the storms are getting bigger and bigger, and it’s no surprise, because the warnings have all been there,” Grande said. “I think Babcock Ranch’s future has gotten even brighter.”

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/us/solar-babcock-ranch-florida-hurricane-ian-climate/index.html

Billions in Climate Deal Funding Could Help Protect U.S. Coastal Cities

Communities across the country hope to tap into funds from Democrats’ new climate law to restore coastal habitats, part of a program that emphasizes nature-based solutions.

By Stephanie Lai, The New York Times, Sept. 20, 2022

NEWPORT BAY, Calif. — Claire Arre, a marine biologist, waded through the sand in search of an Olympia oyster on a recent sunny afternoon, monitoring the bed her organization had built to clean up the surrounding watershed and contemplating all that could be done if she could get her hands on federal funding to expand the work.

Ms. Arre’s project aims to combat climate change using nature instead of human-engineered construction, and it is one of many across the nation’s 254 coastal counties that is eligible for billions in federal funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, the sprawling climate, health care and tax bill signed last month by President Biden.

The measure could “have a direct result in getting our next restoration project off the ground and sharing the beneficial impacts here into another area,” said Ms. Arre, the director of marine restoration for Orange County Coastkeeper, a nonprofit group, as she meticulously scanned the site, surrounded by sandbars and cliffs, pickleweed and docked boats.

The group hopes to expand to nearby Huntington Harbour, and it has been seeking funding to do so.

A little-noticed section of Democrats’ climate legislation, which made the largest federal investment in history to combat the warming of the planet, injects $2.6 billion over five years into coastal communities across the country through grants to fund projects that prepare and respond to hazardous climate-related events and disturbances. The program makes up less than 1 percent of the total climate investment in the law, but it is widely regarded as a significant step and the latest sign of a shift by the federal government toward funding nature-based climate solutions.

Officials from coast to coast have long sought funding to restore natural habitats that are essential to beach communities, as floods wreak havoc in the East and rising sea levels increasingly threaten the West. By 2050, sea levels are expected to rise by a foot or more on average, increasing as much in that time as they have in the past century.

Scientists expect the impact of climate change to be far more damaging in the future. Rising sea levels have been exacerbated by flooding and cataclysmic rainstorms, called “megastorms,” that could upend San Francisco and cities across the globe. Along the East Coast, sea-level rise and flooding from rainfall have been threatening cities in Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, among others. Cities are facing a number of obstacles like repairing destroyed roads and drains or retreating inland. And paying for such measures presents yet another challenge.

“Our coastal areas are shrinking before our very eyes, and people are being displaced,” said Representative Troy Carter, Democrat of Louisiana, whose home state has lost more than 2,000 square miles of coast — roughly the size of Delaware — since the 1930s. The coastal restoration funding “is a grand-slam home run,” he said.

Escalating climate threats have prompted a continuing debate among policymakers and experts about how best to guard against devastating damage, between those who prioritize building man-made infrastructure like sea walls — sometimes called “gray infrastructure” — and those who favor nature-based solutions, or so-called green infrastructure.

Some scientists and climate organizations see the climate law as a clear signal that the government is giving priority to natural solutions.

“You are seeing a lot more attention and acceptance of greener options,” said Charles Lester, the director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s a spectrum of ways of responding to shoreline change, and this funding is causing us to think more completely and more holistically about all the different pieces of these puzzles.”

Tom Cors, a government relations official at the Nature Conservancy, said the resilience funding in the climate law, in combination with resources in the infrastructure law passed last year, represented the most significant influx of money for green infrastructure, the latest move in a shift that began about a decade ago.

The bipartisan infrastructure measure added $3 billion to the federal pot for projects related to habitat restoration and climate resilience, but funding has yet to be disbursed as the application process is still underway, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Nearly half of it is earmarked for “high-impact natural infrastructure projects.”

And in 2020, Mr. Biden signed legislation that mandated that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the main civil engineering agency of the government that has historically favored gray infrastructure, consider nature-based solutions during an early planning stage of some projects.

The funding from the new climate law will be distributed to NOAA, which is expected to provide funding through contracts, grants and other agreements to local, state and tribal governments, nonprofits and institutions of higher education. The law specified that the money should go to projects that support natural resources in coastal and marine communities, including wetland restoration or restoring sea grass and oyster beds. It also said the funding should be used to protect fisheries and for projects that protect communities from extreme storms and climate change.

Some examples include adding sand or restoring dunes to provide a buffer for the receding shoreline. Wetland restoration also helps absorb storm waters and carbon dioxide — a chemical in the atmosphere known for warming the planet — and contribute to biodiversity. The flow of water can also be slowed by restoring sea grass and oyster beds.

Amy Hutzel, the executive officer for California’s State Coastal Conservancy, the state’s leading nature-based restoration agency, said she was pleased that the climate law focused on nature-based projects, which can reduce the impact of wind and wave patterns along the coast, as opposed to building levees and sea walls.

The moment a city constructs a levee or a sea wall, it “is immediately deteriorating,” Ms. Hutzel said. “When you work with nature, you are building a system that the natural processes are maintaining.”

Some scientists argue that such an approach can be more cost-effective than man-made projects. A New York City study in Queens showed that using gray infrastructure would be twice as expensive as incorporating both gray and green projects.

But nature-based solutions, while attractive, can be difficult to execute, Mr. Lester noted.

Jennifer Brunton, the New York district water business line leader at WSP, an engineering consulting firm, said many of her clients turn away from green infrastructure because they do not have enough space for nature-based solutions and because it is less mainstream.

“They’re hallmark projects,” Ms. Brunton said. “Gray infrastructure is tried and true.”

Gray infrastructure has traditionally been preferred by homeowners along the coast who are willing to part with their beach access if it means creating concrete fixtures that can safeguard their homes, as well as city officials who are skeptical about the effectiveness of green infrastructure. Proponents of gray infrastructure also argue that green projects need constant maintenance, whereas gray infrastructure can be easier to maintain.

In Pacifica, Calif., homeowners like Mark Stechbart, a retiree, have been calling for more gray infrastructure to offset the sea-level rise that is threatening their properties. The coastline in his Northern California community does not have the right conditions for green infrastructure, Mr. Stechbart said, leaving the city with two options: go gray or go inland.

“Gray infrastructure, at least around here, is the only thing that works,” Mr. Stechbart said in an interview. “Either we have a town that functions or we don’t.”

He added, “There are some areas where if you don’t maintain and improve shoreline protections, a major hotel goes in the water.”

Lawmakers in both parties have embraced nature-based infrastructure initiatives, though Republicans opposed the climate law en masse.

“Investing in natural infrastructure projects will better protect coastal communities while restoring habitat and stimulating local economic development,” Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, said in a statement.

Representative Michelle Steel, Republican of California, has supported nature-based resiliency projects in her district, such as adding sand to Huntington Beach. In a statement explaining why she voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, Ms. Steel said, “We need to cut federal spending and get costs under control instead of expecting American families to foot the bill for Washington’s spending addiction.”

Representative Garret Graves, Republican of Louisiana, a champion of resilience projects, also voted no. In a written statement, he said he had little confidence that NOAA would be “fair or transparent” when allocating the funding.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/us/politics/climate-law-coastal-projects.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Rising seas could swallow millions of U.S. acres within decades

New research finds an estimated 25,000 properties in Louisiana could slip below tidal boundary lines by 2050. Florida, Texas and North Carolina also face profound economic risks.

By Brady Dennis, The Washington Post, Sept. 8, 2022

The water is coming.

There’s no longer much doubt about that, as scientists have increasingly documented how the warming of the planet has accelerated sea level rise along coasts around the world.

10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint

But an analysis published Thursday by the research nonprofit Climate Central reveals a troubling dimension of the economic toll that could unfold in the United States, as hundreds of thousands of homes, offices and other privately owned properties slip below swelling tide lines over the next few decades.

Here are five takeaways from the research about the people and places that stand to lose most, the likely ripple effects and reasons the world must cut its emissions of greenhouse gases in order to eventually stem the rising waters:

1. Sea level rise will shift coastlines — and property lines

Researchers at Climate Central took scientific data on projected sea level rise, as well as information about state tidal boundaries, and combined that with records on more than 50 million individual properties across hundreds of U.S. counties to identify parcels most likely at risk.

Their conclusion: Nearly 650,000 individual, privately owned parcels, across as many as 4.4 million acres of land, are projected to fall below changing tidal boundaries by 2050. The land affected could swell to 9.1 million acres by 2100. According to Thursday’s analysis, properties with a collective assessed value of $108 billion could be affected by the end of the century, based on current emissions. But, the authors noted, because complete property values were not available for all counties, the actual total is likely to be far higher.

The changes also could come gradually at first, then quickly. In many communities, the authors wrote, structures are clustered in areas that historically are on safe ground. But once rising seas reach those densely developed elevations, “the number of affected buildings sharply increases.”

“As the sea is rising, tide lines are moving up elevation, upslope and inland,” said Don Bain, a senior adviser at Climate Central and an expert in sea level rise, who led the analysis. “People really haven’t internalized that yet — that ‘Hey, I’m going to have something taken away from me by the sea.’ ”

2. The Gulf Coast and Atlantic Coast stand to lose most

It’s no surprise that Louisiana, where the seas are swelling and land is sinking, faces a daunting loss of property in the years to come.

The Climate Central analysis estimated that more than 25,000 properties, totaling nearly 2.5 million acres in the state, could fall wholly below tidal boundary lines by 2050 — a number that far exceeds any other place in the nation. That would amount to 8.7 percent of Louisiana’s total land area, the report found.

But other states also appear to face widespread threats. The top three at risk behind Louisiana are Florida, North Carolina and Texas, all of which have large swaths of low-lying, imperiled coastlines.

While property across the Southeast might face the most collective risk, other states also have reason for concern. New Jersey and New York, for instance, also stand to see thousands of properties fall below tidelines in coming decades. Same for Maryland, which the researchers project could see more than 2,500 buildings impacted.

The impacts of sea level rise already are evident, as some communities face the prospect of retreat and a growing number grapple with nuisance or “sunny day” flooding.

Eventually, such issues will “transition from something that’s rare to becoming something that’s normal,” said William Sweet, an oceanographer and sea level rise expert at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Ocean Service.

3. It’s not just about flooded homes. It’s about eroding tax bases.

The loss of homes and other properties — especially those along the waterfront — isn’t just a tragedy for owners. It is a surefire way to erode the revenue municipal governments need to operate.

“Ultimately, this is a local problem and a local story,” Bain said. “We finance local government through our property taxes.”

If sea levels continue to rise unabated, that poses more than just a problem to beaches and condos that line the coasts. It eventually will translate into fewer taxable properties, and less money to fund schools and fire departments, fix roads, maintain sewers and provide other essential services.

“Diminished property values and a smaller tax base can lead to lower tax revenues and reduced public services — a potential downward spiral of disinvestment and population decline, reduced tax base and public services, and so on,” Thursday’s analysis found.

4. The potential ripple effects are vast

Eroding tax bases are a big problem. But hardly the only one. The study also found a litany of other complications that likely will result as sea levels inch higher and higher.

“The legal and political ramifications of these changes are complex, and will likely vary among locations,” the analysis found. “Those ramifications extend well beyond loss of tax revenue as property owners object to paying taxes on submerged land.”

The rise in America's billion-dollar climate disasters

Beyond those initial shocks, municipalities and individuals will also be forced to confront the significant costs for removing inundated structures and flooded septic tanks. Governments could be on the hook for properties that get abandoned, adding additional expenses not covered by their budgets.

But even before then, communities already are wrestling with the need to repair streets and roads damaged by flooding, as well as overwhelmed or outdated sewer and water systems. “How city and county management teams respond to these risks, or if they respond at all, is material to the city’s and county’s future ability to repay debt and protect its credit rating,” the authors wrote.

5. The future is not (entirely) set in stone

The world’s foremost scientists have found that given the carbon built up in the atmosphere after generations of burning fossil fuels, the rate of sea level rise is increasing and will continue over the next several decades.

Those findings are in line with a major report earlier this year from the NOAA, which found that sea levels could rise along U.S. coastlines by roughly a foot between now and 2050 — roughly as much change over the next three decades as over the past century.

“That trajectory appears somewhat set,” said Sweet, who was not involved in Thursday’s study.

What remains undetermined is how communities across the United States prepare for the changes they know are coming, and what this country and others do to slow the heating of the planet.

“If we get our act together, we can get to a lower curve, and that buys us time,” Bain said. “We don’t want [seas] rising so fast that it outpaces our capacity to adapt.”

Sweet said having access to reliable data hopefully gives public officials and individuals information they need “so they can make the smart choices to best defend and prepare against rising seas” — from shoring up infrastructure to making thoughtful decisions about development.

But ultimately, he said, the world must act in concert to make sure the problem doesn’t grow worse indefinitely.

“Emissions matter, especially as we get beyond the next 20 or 30 years,” Sweet said. “You reduce emissions, you reduce your likelihood of higher sea levels.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/08/sea-level-rise-climate-central/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=wp_energy_and_environment&wpisrc=nl_green

Costs of climate change far surpass government estimates, study says

The new comprehensive analysis pegs the social cost of carbon at $185 a ton — more than triple the current federal standard

By Dino Grandoni & Brady Dennis, The Washington Post, Sept. 1, 2022

The economic toll of deadly heat waves, crop-killing droughts and rising seas that each additional ton of carbon dioxide levies on society is much higher than the U.S. government tallies when considering new regulations, according to a new analysis published Thursday.

A sobering paper in the journal Nature on the damage caused by climate change brings into relief the threat that higher temperatures pose on the lives and livelihoods of millions of people at home and overseas.

The research team’s key finding: Each additional ton of carbon dioxide that cars, power plants and other sources add to the atmosphere costs society $185 — more than triple the federal government’s current figure.

The new study calculating climate change’s economic toll — known as the “social cost of carbon” — could renew pressure on President Biden to hike the federal government’s own estimate, a crucial number used by officials when assessing the potential costs and benefits of government regulations.

“The bottom line is that our results show that when you fully update the social cost of carbon methodology to the state of the science, it suggests that the existing estimates that are in use by the federal government are vastly underestimating the harm,” said Kevin Rennert, a research fellow at the think tank Resources for the Future and a co-author of the paper.

Here’s more about what it all means:

The social what of what?

With wildfires burning more ferociously, droughts lasting longer and hurricanes becoming more intense, scientists agree the monetary toll of climate change will be enormous. The social cost of carbon is an attempt to put a dollar figure on that destruction.

The idea for the metric came to fruition during President Barack Obama’s administration, which at one point settled on a cost of roughly $51 a ton when adjusted for inflation. With nations releasing billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year, the toll adds up pretty quickly.

But many experts thought the Obama-era figure might be lowballing the actual costs. In early 2017, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommended a major update to the metric to make the calculation more transparent and scientifically sound.

Donald Trump became president a week after the release of the NAS report, and his administration wasted little time in disbanding the interagency working group on the carbon price. By excluding damages of climate change abroad, the Trump team slashed the estimated cost of each ton of carbon pollution to between $1 and $7 per ton.

After Joe Biden took office, the White House reestablished the working group and told federal agencies to return to using the Obama-era price of $51 per ton — at least temporarily, promising to update the cost. In May, the Supreme Court allowed Biden’s deputies to continue using that higher interim estimate.

What are some of the big costs of climate change?

Temperature-related mortality extracts a particularly high cost, according to the research group led by experts at Resources for the Future and the University of California at Berkeley.

In the United States, extreme heat is the most fatal form of weather disaster, with hundreds of Americans losing their lives last summer. Any additional hospitalization or death as temperatures rise is, of course, a tragedy — but it’s also one to which economists are able to assign a dollar value.

Another major concern is crop failure. Altered yields of rice, soy, maize and wheat as weather patterns shift could upend global trade and have a far worse economic impact than previously thought, according to the team.

In Thursday’s analysis, researchers also lowered the “discount rate” — a method of measuring future costs and benefits — on the dangers of sea level rise and other effects of climate change. A lower discount rate implies a higher cost to inaction.

Whatever number policymakers use, the idea is to provide them a metric by which to tally the ongoing costs and benefits of a regulation or infrastructure project years or decades into the future. Ideally, the calculations offer a worthwhile road map of whether implementing certain policies will pay off down the road.

To make the dizzying set of calculations behind Thursday’s paper, the researchers gathered specialists — including climate scientists, economists and statisticians — from a dozen institutions to assess the latest science.

“When we started this project, we knew that we would only succeed by assembling a team of leading researchers in each discipline to contribute their expertise,” said David Anthoff, an environmental economist at UC-Berkeley and another study co-author.

The team emphasized there is still a wide range of uncertainty in their estimate. And there are plenty of negative impacts they did not assess, including the potential decline of ecosystems, loss of labor productivity and outbreak of war.

Is the social cost of carbon controversial?

You betcha.

For well over a decade, many elected officials and academics have debated how to properly quantify the economic costs of greenhouse gas emissions — and how much the government should rely on such estimates.

On one end of the spectrum are folks who reject the utility of such an approach altogether. When President Biden boosted the figure to $51, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) called the move “a backdoor carbon tax.”

“Since the president can’t rationalize the crippling costs of his climate policies,” Barrasso said in a statement, “he needs to exaggerate the benefits.”

This summer, a group of conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill introduced a bill that would prohibit the federal government from using the social cost of carbon in the rulemaking process.

Nick Loris, vice president of public policy at the Conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions, or C3 Solutions, has raised a more nuanced set of concerns.

“I do believe there’s a social cost of carbon and that increased carbon in the atmosphere increases costs to the economy and our ecology and the planet, and those damages will likely get worse in the future if we don’t mitigate emissions,” Loris said. He also said the team behind Thursday’s paper is rigorous and credible.

But the problem, he said, is that even peer-reviewed academic literature contains a range of different estimates for the true costs, depending on assumptions and methodologies and the possibilities of wild swings in policy between administration risks creating uncertainty among regulated industries.

It’s important to analyze the potential future economic damages posed by a warming planet and a worthwhile data point for policymakers and regulators, Loris said. But, he added, “it can’t be relied on as the singular number to justify a regulation or policy action.”

Why is the social cost of carbon important?

The value is an essential input in a lot of federal policymaking — whether to drill for oil, to boost the energy efficiency of appliances, to allow a power plant to continue burning coal. Setting the cost of carbon high would encourage clean energy projects, deter new coal leasing on federal acreage and influence the type of steel used in taxpayer-funded infrastructure.

“Getting the number right is critical,” Tamma Carleton said in an email. Carleton is an assistant professor of economics at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

“A value that is too low means that we face excessive climate change risks, but a value that is too high imposes unwarranted emissions mitigation costs on the economy.”

She said Thursday’s paper includes the most up-to-date science and “marks a substantial improvement” upon estimates previously developed by the U.S. government.

The Biden administration “remains committed to accounting for the costs of greenhouse gas emissions as accurately as possible,” said a spokeswoman for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. But the office did not say when it would make an update to the figure.

Even as the Trump administration was drastically reducing the social cost of carbon, Democratic-leaning states have pressed ahead with their own policies.

In late 2020, for instance, New York adopted a “value of carbon guidance” ranging between $79 and $125 that it will apply to policies and programs going forward. And other states such as Illinois, Colorado, Washington and Minnesota use the metric for various types of policy analysis or implementation, including in the electricity sector.

The city of Minneapolis also voted to impose a $42 per ton estimate for the costs of climate change several years back, though as Mayor Jacob Frey told The Washington Post in an interview last year, “Carbon does not respect borders.”

The emissions that come from Phoenix or Baltimore or Texas, he said, impact life in Minneapolis and other places. That is why a federal standard that factors in the true costs of climate change is essential, he said.

“It really should be baked into every decision.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/01/costs-climate-change-far-surpass-government-estimates-study-says/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=wp_energy_and_environment&wpisrc=nl_green

‘The Three Climateers’: Meet the new generation of Senate climate hawks

Singularly focused, they are credited with laying the groundwork for the shift among Senate Democrats from being climate cautious to climate advocates.

By Leigh Ann Caldwell and Maxine Joselow, The Washington Post, Aug. 18, 2022

When the largest climate bill in U.S. history passed the Senate this month, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) choked back tears.

“This is a planetary emergency, and this is the first time the federal government has taken action that is worthy of the moment,” he told reporters at the time. “Now I can look my kids in the eye and say we’re really doing something about climate.”

For Schatz, one of Congress’s most vocal climate hawks, the moment marked the triumphant culmination of a long, treacherous effort to muscle climate legislation through the upper chamber.

“It was relief,” Schatz said in an interview. “It was a celebration of the work that everybody had done, but most importantly to me is it represented hope that the United States government can address the biggest single challenge of this political generation.”

It was “a political miracle,” Schatz added.

Schatz, 49, embodies a new type of climate hawk on Capitol Hill — one that resonates with a younger generation of climate activists determined to win buy-in not just from environmentalists but also from farmers, ranchers, Native people, labor groups, low-income communities and corporations, too. Schatz, who chairs the Indian Affairs Committee, understood that the people who are affected must be brought into the effort.

He doesn’t do it alone. He and two of his colleagues, Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who is 50, and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who is 66, teamed up over the past decade to craft a new model of persistent activism inside the power corridors of Congress alongside a growing climate-focused advocacy.

And they still work alongside other Democrats who have long prioritized climate, including Sen. Edward J. Markey (Mass.), 76, who spearheaded the failed 2010 cap-and-trade effort and the Green New Deal, and Sen. Thomas R. Carper (Del.), 75, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, and played a role in crafting the Democrats’ $370 billion climate bill.

Schatz has not attracted as much attention for his climate advocacy as Whitehouse, who has delivered nearly 300 “Time to Wake Up” speeches on the Senate floor to urge legislative action on global warming. But Schatz came to the Senate with climate credentials: He asked Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii’s governor at the time, to appoint him to serve the rest of longtime Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye’s term after Inouye’s death in 2012 because climate was Schatz’s top priority.

Schatz’s arrival gave Whitehouse, elected to the Senate in 2006 and its most vocal climate activist, a more soft-spoken partner. They began to strategize and plan to raise awareness and lay the foundation for legislation. They organized an overnight talk-a-thon on the Senate floor about climate in 2014 and introduced a bill to tax carbon emissions. Notably, moderate and vulnerable Democrats didn’t participate and the carbon tax bill didn’t go anywhere.

“This was like before everybody was worried about climate or before climate action was cool,” said Tiernen Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters. Sittenfeld began working with Schatz on climate days after he arrived in D.C. “This used to be a much lonelier fight in Congress.”

Heinrich, a close friend of Schatz’s who built a solar car in college and drove it across the country, made the duo a trio when he joined the Senate in 2013.

The three men come from different parts of the country that are facing different, but equally dangerous, climate disasters.

In Hawaii, sea levels have risen about 10 inches since 1950, increasing the frequency of flooding for coastal communities. In New Mexico, a stretch of the Rio Grande recently ran dry for the first time in 40 years amid a historic megadrought. And in Rhode Island, rising ocean temperatures are straining the state’s lobster industry.

They have made climate change a primary focus of their Senate careers.

“ ‘The Three Climateers’ [is what] we have called ourselves at various times to try and cheer ourselves up,” Whitehouse said in an interview.

In November, they all flew to the COP26 U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Some attendees called them the “three amigos” because they appeared inseparable and they had the same message: The United States will be a leader on climate.

The three have been meeting every week since 2019 to plan legislative and social media campaigns around climate. They would speak regularly at weekly closed-door Democratic lunches to keep climate top of mind for their caucus.

Climate change was not always a winning issue for Democrats, and even now, Democratic strategists admit that it won’t play well in every district or state in November’s midterm elections, especially in areas where the economy is reliant on fossil fuels.

The lowest point for climate advocates was in 2010, when moderate Senate Democrats facing head winds in their reelection efforts urged President Barack Obama to walk away from a major cap-and-trade bill after a bruising fight to pass the Affordable Care Act. (He did.) Little has happened legislatively on climate since then. Until now.

The surprising political shifts that led to the climate bill’s passage

Slowly, the trio saw a shift in their colleagues.

Schatz said the climate movement — and the lawmakers’ persistence — transformed “an issue that used to divide Democrats into an issue that motivates and unites Democrats.”

“We reached the point in this Congress where it was a major issue for the vast majority of the caucus,” Heinrich said. “I think leadership and [Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.)], in particular, responded to that. I mean, he saw the activism that was occurring in his home state and then also the way the entire caucus was making that a priority.”

Whitehouse said the Trump administration, which dramatically cut environmental regulations and withdrew from the Paris agreement with the backing of Republicans in Congress, helped the Democrats to coalesce.

“The absolutely foul and filthy way that they’ve dealt with pollution and energy issues was so flagrant and so appalling that even if this wasn’t your top issue, you just couldn’t help but be disgusted [by] what you saw in that administration,” Whitehouse said. “I think that had a very strong binding effect on the caucus.”

The Manchin negotiations

During negotiations with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on the Democrats’ climate and health-care bill, the Three Climateers were in constant contact with the White House, Schumer and his staff. They made clear that they wouldn’t kill a deal because of its imperfections. They weren’t in the room but said they trusted Schumer to represent their interests. The senators were also in constant contact with Manchin (as was nearly every other Democratic senator).

“We just wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Schatz said, but he acknowledged that they had to be flexible in accepting what was left out.

“The North Star from inside the Schumer team was always not so much politics but like how many million of metric tons of emissions can we avoid,” Heinrich said in an interview.

“I met with a group of them and I told them there might have to be things in there that we don’t like to reach an agreement with Manchin. They said get what you can, just make it a good bill,” Schumer said in a statement of Schatz, Whitehouse and Heinrich, as well as Sens. Markey, Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). “They had my back. They really did.”

While Schumer was negotiating with Manchin, Schatz was the lead progressive negotiator with Manchin on his desire to overhaul permitting for energy projects, a separate deal that was essential to the main bill. When the Schumer-Manchin talks fell apart, the permitting negotiations did, too.

Schatz encouraged the administration to move to a Plan B of executive actions and declaring a climate emergency both as an alternative and also hoping the threat of unilateral climate actions would motivate Manchin to come back to the table.

“He is skilled in the inside game, has strong policy chops, is a great communicator, builds alliances, and knows how to get things done,” Ron Klain, President Biden’s chief of staff, said in a statement. “He works with a key group of Senate colleagues, who as a group, effectively drive climate action.”

Biden never declared that climate emergency and didn’t move on the executive actions because Schumer and Manchin reached a deal. It included a version of Schatz and Whitehouse’s bill to place a fee on methane emissions. Manchin and Schatz subsequently reached a deal on the permitting reform, which Congress will try to pass later this year.

Schatz, Whitehouse and Heinrich all say that the president signing the Inflation Reduction Act into law is just the beginning of their work.

“I’m pretty confident that Martin and Brian and I are going to be a little posse riding out to make sure that the action is forthcoming,” Whitehouse said.

Former senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who was part of a failed effort to pass the cap-and-trade climate bill in 2010, said she got a phone call from an emotional Schatz after the Inflation Reduction Act cleared the Senate.

“He’s part of a new generation of environmentalists, and he’s wonderful,” Boxer said. “He just called to say, ‘Thanks for laying the groundwork.’ ”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/three-climateers-meet-new-generation-senate-climate-hawks/