Local civil engineer Denis Lougeay uses many outdated and misleading arguments in his July 17 commentary, “Climate policy costs,” to attack the cost of the Encinitas Climate Action Plan, which aims to lower the city’s CO2 emissions.
Lougeay argues that because CO2 comprises only 0.0005% of the Earth’s atmosphere, it is too small a component to have an impact on the planet’s warming. Imagine adding a small amount of salt to food to enhance the taste, while adding too much makes it inedible.
Let’s examine how we got into this predicament. In 1977, Exxon executives were told by James F. Black, Ph.D., the company’s top scientist, in an internal company document, “that man has a time window of five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”
Dr. Black’s research determined that, due to the burning of fossil fuels, the planet would begin warming at an unprecedented rate. He was deeply concerned that “this carbon pollution could eventually endanger humanity.”
In 1979, Exxon decided to fund additional research and sent out a ship with its own scientists and specialized scientific equipment. Their own model then predicted that Earth’s temperature would rise to dangerous levels due to the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting increase in atmospheric CO2.
However, Exxon decided this would hurt its bottom line and, as economists put it, strand its assets underground and severely damage its business model.
Consequently, by the late 1980s, Exxon began discrediting climate science and climate scientists. Exxon started lying and greenwashing by funding a large variety of organizations and think tanks, as well as politicians who would support its falsehoods. These tactics are the same as those used by the tobacco industry to avoid regulation.
Another claim made by Lougeay is that more CO2 in the atmosphere is good for plants, but please consider that plants were doing quite well before the additional CO2. He also claims there is a “greening trend.” I don’t believe that claim.
Recently, while flying from San Diego to Seattle and sitting in a window seat, I was shocked by the vast areas of blackened forests. Lougeay states that these “catastrophic events … cannot be linked to slightly warmer climate.” That is difficult to justify given the ever-increasing threat of these events, which climate models have long projected.
The benefits of a free-market economy are supposed to include lowering the cost of competing products. That is not happening. While the sun and wind are free, and the overall cost of building and maintaining new wind and solar power plants is much lower than building new coal, gas, nuclear or oil plants — along with the ever-increasing cost of fueling those plants — we are not seeing those benefits.
Why? Because the federal government provides what one analysis estimates is “$760 billion annually through subsidies, tax breaks, and unpriced externalities” to the U.S. fossil fuel industry.
Many of the recently elected members of the Encinitas City Council hold the same discredited beliefs as Lougeay. I am confident most Encinitas residents understand the risks climate change poses. It is time we elect a more credible and effective City Council.
The Encinitas Climate Action Plan is only a very small step in the right direction, but it is a step we must take.
Alan Lee Schmidt is a volunteer with San Diego 350 (SD350.org). He is retired and has lived in Encinitas since 1976.
