Kermit The Frog Was Right - It's Not Easy Bein' Green

Back when my kids were growing up, they'd watch the occasional Sesame Street cliffhanger.  Little did we know that Kermit the Frog's signature lament, "It's Not Easy Bein' Green," would come to be the byword for our times.

In "The price of cleanliness," the Economist wrote "China is torn between getting greener and getting richer."  Mr. Obama's highfalutin' talk about growing the economy by creating high-paying "green jobs" not withstanding, both the Economist and the Chinese government recognize that there's an irreconcilable conflict between economic growth and "bein' green."

That makes sense - if eco-friendly energy could be produced at lower cost than what we're doing now, businesses would already be doing it.  The only way to get eco-friendly energy is by subsidies which raise taxes or by restricting current energy generation methodologies which raises costs.  Either way, living standards go down, which is a hard sell indeed.

Bein' Green is Hard to Do

The article opens:

The Taiyanggong Thermal Power Plant in north-east Beijing is delightfully green.  Unlike most of China's smoke-belching power stations, it has such low emissions that luxury flats are being built next to it.  They are fetching high prices.  Owners will look out over something that looks more like a cluster of office buildings (apart from a couple of grey chimneys) than a power plant.  The cooling towers, near a grove of date trees and an ornamental pool, look a bit like the Great Wall.

The plant has two General Electric gas-fueled turbines.  It produces half the emissions of a comparable coal-fired facility and its steam supplies heat to 1 million homes as well as to the American embassy in Beijing.  Sounds ideal, right?

Well, no.  The plant was built during the "cost is no object" era in the run-up to the Olympic games.  Now the party's over; the banners have been rolled up and put away, and the plant's owners have the problem of making electricity economically.

They find that eco-friendly electricity costs 50% more than in a coal-fired facility.  Energy cost increases of that magnitude shouldn't surprise you if you've been paying attention.  The New York Times wrote:

The price tag for a new climate agreement will be a staggering $100 billion a year by 2020, many economists estimate; some put the cost at closer to $1 trillion.

Our Money for Their Carbon

Fortunately for the Chinese, the plant qualifies for the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) by which rich countries offset carbon emissions by paying for carbon cuts in developing ones.  Even with $12 million in annual CDM payments, which are paid to the Chinese by guess who, the plant barely breaks even.

China realizes that using energy less wastefully will reduce carbon emissions and also save money.  To that end, China is talking about generating less carbon per unit of GNP; the United States successfully made similar changes during and after the Carter oil shock many Presidents ago.

Unfortunately, keeping their citizens content requires that Chinese GNP grow faster than energy use can be reduced cost-effectively.  China's total emissions will go up unless GNP growth is held down by raising energy costs artificially.  Holding down economic prosperity would lead to hate and discontent among the Chinese masses so their leadership isn't as eager to do that as ours seems to be.

There's a further difficulty - the most effective technologies for reducing energy consumption come from America.  The Chinese are not eager to pay royalties and the Americans are not eager to teach the Chinese how to compete with them in the future.  The Chinese claim that America ought to pay much if not most of their costs in reducing carbon emissions, a concept not likely to go down well with American taxpayers who're already struggling with large deficits.

Bein' Green Costs MUCH Green

The Chinese aren't the only government to recognize that it's neither cheap nor easy bein' green.  Reuters reports:

Asia Pacific leaders backed away on Saturday from supporting a global halving of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, even as Brazil pledged deep cuts of its own over the next decade.

An initial draft leaders' statement from an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Singapore had said that "global emissions will need to ... be reduced to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050."

But a later, watered-down version stated: "We believe that global emissions will need to peak over the next few years, and be substantially reduced by 2050, recognizing that the timeframe for peaking will be longer in developing economies."

The world's two biggest carbon emitters who account for 40% of worldwide emissions - China and the United States - are members of APEC; this change to the draft APEC announcement says a great deal about what's likely to happen.  Western governments who answer to the voters from time to time are finding that their citizens a) believe that the economy is more important than the environment, at least for now, and b) are beginning to have doubts that what the climate doomsayers are saying is true.

We're still looking forward to seeing what comes out of the Copenhagen conference on the environment even though the New York Times reports:

President Obama and other world leaders have decided to put off the difficult task of reaching a climate change agreement at a global climate conference scheduled for next month, agreeing instead to make it the mission of the Copenhagen conference to reach a less specific "politically binding" agreement that would punt the most difficult issues into the future.  [emphasis added]

Why are we not surprised?  Mr. Obama might not mind trillion-dollar deficits, but some of the other national leaders seem to have a bit more sense.  We're eagerly waiting for them to tell us the difference between an "agreement" and a less specific "politically binding" agreement.

We already know a major part of the outcome - the great and the good will generate huge amounts of carbon at our expense as they fly to beautiful Copenhagen.  Given that they've already agreed that they don't have to be specific, they'll produce much hot air and slaughter many trees whilst bloviating about the sacrifices we unimportant people will have to make to Save the Planet.

They'll run all over town in low-mileage limos, generating even more emissions while punting all the difficult issues.  Sounds like more of the same old-fashioned political junketry at our expense.

Whether anything of significance will emerge remains to be seen.  We doubt it, but that's a good thing.  The more we see of the specifics that true believers in Saving the Planet are demanding, the more we like the idea of punting climate change into the future, the further into the future, the better.