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Earth Chats: Bill McKibbenIf we don't slow global warming through growth control, we'll have to fight its disastrous effects.


Posted Monday, April 21, 2008, at 5:26 PM ET

(Continued from page 4)

Bainbridge Island, Wash.: Governments are very poor at evaluating risk and picking a technological fix for a problem. Carbon-trading markets already have proven to be a huge boon for lobbyists and entrenched CO2 emitters in Europe. With that said, achieving reductions in CO2 emissions will require concerted worldwide action on a scale never before achieved. Would you agree that the small government approach to the problem of CO2—and perhaps the only one with any long-term chance of success—is a carbon tax charged at the point of extraction?

Bill McKibben: Call it a tax, or a cap, or whatever—your point is correct. We need to change the cost profile of carbon, which is now free and needs to be expensive. When that happens, much will follow

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Atlanta: It seems to me that any carbon dioxide reduction plan except sequestration—which if I understand right does not work economically yet—would require reducing the amount of coal we consume for energy. The coal industry is not going to be happy about that, and will seek to find further markets for their product. How can we ensure that the American coal mining industry does not suffer unduly (a political nightmare) and that whatever further markets they find remain "green"?

Bill McKibben: I don't care particularly about the coal industry, but I do about the people who work in it. They need and deserve serious retraining. Luckily, there aren't many people in that industry anymore (not because of environmentalists, but because of mechanization). It should be doable

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Oakland, Calif.: Most politicians talk about implementing a "cap-and-trade" program for carbon emissions as the preferred method of reducing the Nation's emissions profile. Economists, however, point out that a carbon tax could accomplish the same result with substantially reduced bureaucratic overhead costs. Which do you support, a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program? What role do the political ramifications of even oblique references to "raising taxes" play in this debate?

Bill McKibben: I think they're roughly the same (if designed right) and I understand the difficulty that American politicians have in uttering the word tax. I think that people should take a look at the Cap and Dividend system, also called Skytrust, proposed by Peter Barnes—basically, the govt. would cut us each a check annually for our share of the atmosphere. I think it makes a good deal of sense politically

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Montpelier, Vt.: Have you heard about the concept of "natural capital"? The idea is that healthy ecosystems provide us with nonmarket goods and services (clean air, water recycling, nutrient recycling, flood protection, water delivery, pollination, micro- and macro-climate moderation, ozone protection, pest control, waste absorption, etc.). Bob Costanza at University of Vermont and some other economists from around the world have made a first estimation of the value of these services, and it tops $3 trillion every year—larger than the combined GDPs of the world.

We're losing ecosystem services globally. We never have priced these services, let alone valued them at anything like their market value. What do you propose to do to stop the drawdown—the wanton destruction—of natural capital? Don't you see a role for wise policy to set limits to what the free market can do with the ecosystems that provide us with these services?

Bill McKibben: Yes—that's a key role for governments to perform. And the easiest way to do it is probably to impose economic costs on the degradation.

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Tucson, Ariz.: A recent article in Nature suggests that, given the inertia of our Western world and the rapidly growing energy demands of East Asia, energy saving strategies alone will neither keep us in fuel nor save the Earth from warming. Without massive investment or the greatest slice of good fortune since the discovery of penicillin, expecting new technologies to ride to a timely rescue is surely naive. What, in your opinion, is the realistic way forward.

Bill McKibben: I think it's fine to invest new money; my guess is that the fastest way of doing that is to impose a high enough price on carbon that private enterprise sees the possibility of a big win in new technologies. I'm not adverse to the govt. doing research directly, but am sobered by the example of the ethanol folly on the wisdom of relying wholly on their technosavvy

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Washington: Sir, global warming is a fact. The more people you have on the planet and the more things you build, the warmer it will get. But as the science clearly shows, even if we were to shut down every coal-burning plant, we wouldn't make a difference. While global warming is a fact, man's influence on it is minimal. We had two ice ages before man was even here ... the heating on cooling of the Earth is natural.

We need to working towards clean air, water and soil. The global warming industry is diverting resources away from science that could better the lives of all mankind. The money being diverted is being used for projects not based on fact, and to enrich the carbon-offset business Al Gore started. The perversion of science that makes up the modern global warming cry is a crime.

Bill McKibben: Well, then I'm a criminal. This post is unscientific. If we shut down every coal burning plant—and that should be our eventual goal—the level of co2 in the atmosphere would start to fall. Which is a good thing, because it is unprecedentedly high, and clearly driving climatic destabilization. And the idea that it's a money-making scheme by Al Gore is beneath you.

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Uniontown, Pa.: Thank you for your time Mr McKibben. I would like to know your thoughts on the current U.S. population explosion. The population has grown by about 40 percent to 300 million since the 1960s. Current U.S. population studies indicate that we will grow by another 100 million by 2050. I welcome individual immigrants, but U.S. census records and all population studies now demonstrate that the majority of the past 30 years of exploding population growth has been because of immigrants and their children. Immigration averaged a reasonable 178,000 per year from 1925 through 1964; at these levels the U.S. was projected to achieve population stability by sometime in the 1990s. Unfortunately, Congress increased immigration levels approximately sixfold beginning in 1965.

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Bill McKibben is the author of Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Atlantic, Harper's, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Outside, and Grist.
Photograph of Bill McKibben by Toby Talbot/AP Photo.
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